BX  9178  .J6  S3 

Jones,  John  Sparhawk,  1841 

1910. 
Saved  by  hope 


SAVED  BY  HOPE 


.   NOV  17  1950 

^ ■         .«: 


SAVED  BY  HOPE 


By  J.  SPARHAWK  JONES 

Author  of  "The  Invisible  Things"  and 
**Seeing  Darkly" 


PHILADELPHIA 

THE    WESTMINSTER    PRESS 
I91I 


Copyright,  191  i,  by 

The  Calvary  Presbyterian  Church, 

In  the  City  of  Philadelphia 


Published  May,  1911 


To  THOSE  IN  Baltimore  who  recall 
HIS  ministry;  and  to  his  beloved 
PEOPLE  OF  Calvary  Church  in  Phila- 
delphia THIS  BOOK  OF  SERMONS  IS  DEDI- 
CATED.     He   who    preached    them    lived 

HIMSELF  BY  THE  LIGHT  HE  GAVE  TO  OTHERS, 
IN  ALL  PATIENCE,  COURAGE,  CHARITY  AND 
HOPE. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


A  Letter  of  Counsel 9 

God's  Hope 25 

Our  Brother 38 

Micah  and  His  Levite 51 

The  Power  of  Conscience 65 

Peter's  Question 79 

The  Thunders  of  Horeb 96 

The  Way 107 

The  Pool  of  Bethesda 121 

The  Inspiration  of  the  Almighty 134 

Religion — a  Prophet 146 

The  Sight  of  the  Soul 158 

From  Man  to  God 172 

A  New  Year  Sermon 185 

Life  Immortal 197 


Saved  by  Hope 

A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL 

For  thus  saith  the  Lord,  That  after  seventy  years  he  accom- 
plished at  Babylon  I  will  visit  you,  and  perform  my  good 
word  toward  you,  in  causing  you  to  return  to  this  place. 
For  I  know  the  thoughts  that  I  think  toward  you,  saith  the 
Lord,  thoughts  of  peace,  and  ot  of  evil,  to  give  you  an  expected 
end. — Jeremiah  29  :  10,  11. 

LETTER-WRITING  like  conversation  is  an  art 
difficult  to  bring  to  excellence ;  and  to  achieve 
-«•  an  approximate  perfection  in  either,  requires 
a  natural  gift  by  no  means  common.  Anyone  can 
carry  on  a  correspondence,  but  to  write  Cicero's 
letters  to  Atticus,  or  the  letters  of  Madame  de  Sevigne 
to  her  daughter,  or  those  of  Lord  Chesterfield  to  his 
son,  or  those  of  Horace  Walpole  to  some  of  his  dis- 
tinguished friends,  calls  for  a  peculiar  talent,  a  blend 
of  qualities,  a  vivacity,  wit,  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  power  and  range  of  observation  and  descrip- 
tion, a  happy  knack  of  putting  things,  all  of  which 
rarely  meet  in  the  same  person.  Hence  those  who 
are  famous  either  for  their  conversation  or  for  their 
epistolary  productions,  who  are  classics  on  these 
lines,  may  be  numbered  without  counting  very  high 
into  figures.     Either  one  of  them  carried  to  a  pitch 

9 


lo  A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL 

of  excellence  implies  an  unusual  combination  of 
traits.  It  is  also  true  that  one  may  succeed  to  ad- 
miration in  one  of  these  fine  arts,  without  correspond- 
ing proficiency  in  the  other.  They  do  not  go  in 
company  and  are  not  inseparable.  The  fact  that  a 
person  can  do  one  thing  well,  grounds  no  presumption 
that  he  will  be  equally  proficient  even  in  a  kindred 
study  or  department.  People  often  make  the  mis- 
take of  assuming  that  a  talented  individual  is  good 
for  anything,  and  would  shine  under  any  circumstance 
in  which  he  was  placed.  Like  other  illusions,  this 
one  is  likely  to  be  dispelled  by  trial  and  experiment. 
Any  kind  of  excellence  is  a  lofty  peak  to  climb,  so 
toilsome  and  arduous,  indeed,  that  he  who  can  reach 
the  top,  or  go  near  to  it,  ought  to  be  satisfied,  nor 
ought  more  to  be  expected  of  him. 

Now  this  context  reproducing  a  letter  written  by 
Jeremiah  to  the  captives  in  Babylon  is  perhaps  the 
oldest  composition  of  the  kind  that  has  floated  down 
to  us.  It  might  not  be  true  to  say  that  it  was  the  ex- 
ample and  prototype  of  the  apostolic  epistles  written 
to  the  primitive  churches,  yet  it  is  a  very  ancient 
document,  of  which  unquestionably  the  Apostles  were 
aware,  and  which  at  any  rate  furnished  a  precedent 
for  their  letters  of  instruction,  advice  and  encourage- 
ment to  the  scattered  Christian  congregations  of  their 
age.  It  is  pretty  well  agreed  that  a  letter  is  the 
best  vehicle  or  instrument  of  communication  between 
persons  separated  by  long  distance.    It  enables  one 


A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL  ii 

to  be  full,  explicit,  detailed  and  confidential,  and  all 
under  the  seal  of  secrecy.  To  be  sure,  it  may  be 
unsatisfying,  by  reason  of  the  omission  of  a  material 
or  interesting  fact  or  particular,  which  the  reader  would 
like  to  know.  By  telling  a  part  and  not  the  whole,  by 
stopping  suddenly  short  and  letting  something  that 
excites  curiosity  or  wonder  remain  unsaid,  a  letter  may 
be  tantalizing  and  leave  the  mind  in  unpleasant  sus- 
pense; nevertheless,  it  is  obviously  the  approved  and 
most  perfect  mode  of  intercourse  yet  invented  between 
minds,  short  of  a  viva-voce  conversation. 

The  inhabitants  of  Judah  had  been  deported  to 
Babylon  in  large  numbers  on  account  of  their  national 
apostasy  from  Jehovah  the  God  of  Israel.  Jeremiah 
was  the  great  pubHc  man  of  that  era,  an  inspired  seer 
into  the  future;  moreover,  a  man  who  had  a  genius 
for  righteousness  and  took  sorrowfully  to  heart  the 
fickleness  and  inconstancy  of  his  countrymen  in  al- 
ternating between  Jehovah-worship  and  idolatry.  He 
foresaw  and  predicted  the  downfall  of  Judah,  at  the 
hands  of  Babylon,  which  happened  about  585  B.  C. 
Such  was  his  own  eminence,  his  personality  of  such 
large  make  and  caliber,  that  the  Babylonian  con- 
queror did  not  carry  him  into  the  East,  with  the  eHte 
and  flower  of  the  people.  The  story  of  that  black  and 
dismal  time  reports  that  many  of  the  aristocracy,  as 
well  as  the  most  godly  and  zealous  for  the  faith  once 
delivered  to  the  patriarchs,  were  led  in  a  long,  doleful 
procession  by  Nebuchadnezzar  to  Babylonia;    but 


12  A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL 

Jeremiah  was  not  among  them.  He  had  his  option 
to  stay  or  go,  and  he  elected  to  stay.  Ezekiel,  a 
young  priest,  was  deported  with  the  others  and  exer- 
cised his  ministry  in  the  far,  strange  land  among  his 
homesick  compatriots.  It  may  be  that  Jeremiah,  the 
older  prophet,  considered  that  he  could  render  more 
effectual  service  by  staying  with  those  who  were  left 
behind,  since  Ezekiel,  a  man  of  the  same  spirit  with 
himself  and  who  held  the  same  views,  had  gone  with 
the  other  captives.  At  any  rate,  he  accepted  the 
immunity  granted  by  the  great  conqueror,  preferring 
to  remain  in  the  dear  fatherland,  although  it  lay  deso- 
late, scarred  and  empty,  the  best  of  its  population 
winnowed  out  of  it  and  the  refuse  and  sediment  alone 
left.  His  deep  interest,  however,  in  the  welfare  of  the 
exiles  and  his  definite  opinion  about  their  duty  under 
their  ignominious  and  distressing  circumstances  are 
clearly  evinced  by  the  letter  addressed  to  the  elders 
who  were  of  the  Captivity. 

As  to  the  event  itself,  the  Babylonian  exile  is  re- 
garded by  bibhcal  scholars,  and  by  those  who  have  an 
eye  for  the  philosophy  of  history  and  for  the  rationale 
and  explanation  of  things,  as  being  one  of  the  great 
monuments  or  stadia  in  the  unfolding  of  God's  provi- 
dential purpose  for  the  world.  Nothing  had  hap- 
pened to  Israel,  since  the  Exodus,  comparable  to  it  for 
influence  upon  the  future  and  for  its  ulterior  conse- 
quences. It  was  a  pivot  upon  which  great  changes 
hinged.     It  was  a  fork  of  roads  and  a  new  departure. 


A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL  13 

It  was  a  catastrophe  that  was  also  a  crisis  in  which  an 
old  order  culminated  and  a  new  one  set  in.  Just  as  a 
person  sometimes  meets  with  an  accident  or  develops 
an  illness  or  is  overtaken  by  a  sorrow  or  bereavement 
which  he  never  really  outlives,  so,  by  analogy,  the 
Exile  made  a  radical  change  in  the  constitution, 
temper  and  prospects  of  the  people  of  Judah.  It 
engendered  new  ideas,  beliefs,  convictions;  it  made 
them  over  in  important  respects.  It  was  a  fierce  fire 
that  burned  out  of  them  some  peccant  humors,  some 
bad,  poisonous  matter:  for  one  thing,  they  never 
again  returned  to  idolatry.  The  remnant  who  even- 
tually found  their  way  back  to  Palestine  are  not  re- 
ported to  have  set  up  the  image  of  any  heathen  god 
they  had  seen  in  Babylon,  nor  to  have  erected  an  altar 
to  its  worship.  Moreover,  the  national  consciousness 
was  partly  obHterated  by  the  Captivity.  Judah  was 
no  longer  the  theocratic  state  over  which  the  Cove- 
nant God  jealously  watched.  He  had  evidently  suf- 
fered His  people  to  become  tributary  to  the  heathen. 
Their  temple  had  been  profaned  and  destroyed,  its 
services  suspended,  its  priests  unfrocked.  The  whole 
Levitical  system  was  prorogued;  they  could  not 
build  a  temple  in  Babylon  and  perpetuate  the  out- 
ward form  of  their  state  church  there. 

What  happened  in  consequence?  Individualism 
emerged.  Religion  became,  for  the  captives,  a  personal 
matter,  a  personal  relation  between  God  and  the  indi- 
vidual soul.     Instead  of  being  institutional,  an  organi- 


14  A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL 

zation,  an  objective  fact  or  entity,  it  took  on  another 
aspect,  a  somewhat  different  definition.  It  became 
more  of  an  inwardness.  The  poor,  heart-broken  exiles 
learned  by  their  sorry  experience  that  true  rehgion  is 
not  restricted  to  any  one  place,  to  any  particular  set 
of  forms,  to  a  prescribed  ritual ;  that  it  is  not  a  solemn 
ofhce  that  must  be  transacted  by  priests  canonically 
capacitated  to  do  it.  They  could  not  think  so  any 
longer,  now  that  Jerusalem  had  been  sacked  and  was  a 
heap,  and  the  temple  burned  with  fire.  The  stern 
logic  of  events  drove  them  out  of  that  position  and 
revolutionized  their  views.  Both  Jeremiah  and  Eze- 
kiel  preached  this  doctrine — as  appears  from  the 
fragmentary  reports  preserved  in  the  Old  Testament — 
that  God  was  not  dealing  with  them  any  longer  as  a 
political  entity,  a  community  or  commonwealth,  but 
as  individuals.  Those  great  prophets  of  the  Exile 
period  anticipated  that  prophetic  word  of  Christ 
spoken  to  the  Samaritan  woman:  ^'The  hour  cometh 
when  ye  shall  neither  in  this  mountain  nor  yet  at 
Jerusalem  worship  the  Father,  but  when  the  true 
worshippers  shall  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth." 
The  conclusion,  indeed,  of  the  whole  matter  is  that 
the  fall  and  Captivity  of  Judah,  the  destruction  of  its 
national  and  corporate  existence,  were  a  forward  step 
and  a  long  stride  toward  the  Christian  idea,  under 
which  God  deals  directly  with  the  individual  soul  and 
holds  every  soul  of  man  to  a  personal  accountability. 
This  revelation  slowly  dawned  on  Judah  under  the 


A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL  15 

tuition  of  the  prophets  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  during  the 
seventy  years  of  Exile.  It  was  a  splendid  discovery 
in  religion,  as  much  so  as  Newton's  law  of  gravitation 
in  physics;  it  was  the  dusky  dawn  of  Christianity,  a 
pale  gleam  of  the  morning  shooting  up  the  sky  and 
proclaiming  the  coming  day.  It  made  an  epoch  in  the 
religious  history,  not  only  of  Judah,  but  of  mankind. 
A  great  Christian  scholar  has  said  that  there  are  no 
weightier  and  more  critical  passages  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment than  the  eighteenth  and  thirty-third  chapters  of 
Ezekiel,  in  which  the  prophet  expounds  to  the  exiles 
this  new  doctrine, — new  to  them, — that  God  in  His 
providence  intended  to  handle  them  in  their  individual 
capacity,  prince  and  commoner  alike:  ''AH  souls  are 
Mine,  saith  the  Lord;  .  .  .  the  oul  that  sinneth 
it  shall  die."  It  was  not  any  longer  a  state  question, 
a  public  question,  a  corporate  matter.  They  had  not 
been  carried  captive  because  the  king's  government  had 
been  untheocratic  and  had  not  followed  the  law  of 
Deuteronomy;  but  because  they  personally  had  con- 
nived at  prevailing  evils  they  had  sinned  and  they 
must  suffer.  This,  then,  among  other  things,  was 
what  the  Exile  accomplished  for  Judah.  It  pushed 
the  individual  man  to  the  center  of  the  stage  and  made 
his  personal  problem  the  crux.  It  was  not  only 
a  political  revolution — that  was  the  smaller  half — 
but  a  rehgious  revolution  unwittingly  wrought  by 
Nebuchadnezzar  when  he  carried  Judah  to  Babylon. 
Notice  further  one  or  two  particulars  in  Jeremiah's 


i6  A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL 

letter  to  the  elders  and  other  captives.  He  counsels 
them  to  build  houses,  contract  marriages  and  behave 
as  if  they  had  gone  to  stay  for  an  indefinite  period. 
''Seek  the  peace  of  the  city  .  .  .  and  pray  unto 
the  Lord  for  it,"  is  his  earnest  injunction:  not  alto- 
gether what  one  would  expect,  considering  that  it  was 
a  land  shadowed  with  the  wings  of  ignorance,  supersti- 
tion and  idolatry  whither  they  had  gone,  and  he  himself 
one  of  their  holy  prophets  who  had  a  burning  zeal  for 
monotheism  and  the  glory  of  Israel's  jealous  God.  Yet 
this  is  what  he  wrote  to  them,  and  a  sober  second 
thought  satisfies  us  that  it  was  judicious  advice.  Jere- 
miah knew  by  a  divine  premonition  that  his  country- 
men would  have  to  stay  in  Babylonia  for  seventy  years; 
that  the  sons  and  daughters  only  of  the  original  cap- 
tives would  eventually  become  the  Restoration.  All 
of  them  would  leave  their  bones  in  that  foreign  land, 
save  a  few  of  those  who  went  thither  as  very  young 
child  en,  and  who,  perchance,  by  the  grace  of  an  un- 
usual longevity,  might  find  their  way  home  again  on 
sticks  and  crutches  and  litters,  sadly  broken  and 
wrinkled  with  the  hard  lines  of  care  and  sorrow  and  in 
the  pale  decrepitude  of  old  age.  Most  of  them,  the 
majority,  should  make  up  their  minds  that  they  had 
found  their  last  home  on  earth  and  should,  ex  animo, 
adopt  Babylon  as  their  permanent  residence  and 
identify  themselves  with  it.  They  should  become 
naturalized,  as  we  say;  throw  their  heart  into  its 
busy,  manifold  life  and  adjust  themselves  to  its  strange, 


A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL  17 

bizarre  civilization,  its  customs,  conventions  and 
manners;  their  submission  being  subject,  however,  to 
their  religious  convictions;  these  they  must  not  ab- 
jure or  compromise.  For  substance  Jeremiah  coun- 
seled them  not  to  be  peevish  sullen,  irreconcilable, 
but  to  settle  down  quietly  beneath  the  iron  scepter  of 
necessity;  to  be  good  citizens  peaceful,  orderly,  law- 
abiding;  to  conserve  all  they  ound  established  in 
Babylon  that  was  a  matter  of  indifference  and  not 
vital  to  religious  faith,  rather  than  to  be  an  insurgent, 
incendiary  and  troublesome  element  of  the  population. 
"The  better  you  behave,"  he  said  virtually,  *'the 
more  you  will  be  liked  and  the  more  likely  you  will  be 
to  prosper."  I  call  it  sensible  advice  for  the  exiles. 
More  than  that,  it  is  capable  of  being  generalized  into 
a  standing  rule,  pertinent  to  all  circumstances  and 
conditions  of  life:  the  best  thing  to  do  is  to  make  the 
best  out  of  them.  If  uncongenial  and  unhappy,  let 
them  be  ameliorated  or  cured  if  possible;  but  if  ap- 
parently fixed  and  unalterable,  a  providential  order, 
nothing  is  gained  by  kicking  against  the  goads,  by 
working  one's  self  into  a  fever  and  lett  ng  one's  dis- 
abilities and  disadvantages  eat  the  heart  out  of  one 
and  unnerve  one  for  any  good  use.  Cheerful  submis-| 
sion  to  the  inevitable  is  surely  every  man's  strength. ; 
The  important  discovery  is  to  find  out  what  is  the  will 
of  God  concerning  you :  directly  this  is  ascertained  you 
cannot  wheel  too  soon  into  line  with  it.  So  their 
great  prophet  told  the  Captivity  to  make  themselves  as 


i8  A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL 

comfortable  and  happy  as  was  possible  in  Babylon,  not 
to  give  needless  offense,  not  to  become  a  storm-center 
of  ferment  and  disaffection.  Observe,  this  is  not  a 
doctrine  of  supine,  passive  contentment  under  a  load 
that  can  be  removed,  under  hard  conditions  that  can 
be  mitigated.  Any  hardship,  injustice,  oppression, 
that  can  be  challenged  to  show  cause  for  its  being,  and 
whose  yoke  can  be  broken  and  whose  cords  snapped 
asunder  and  thrown  away,  is  certainly  amenable  to 
such  treatment.  It  is  surely  no  crime  to  improve  one's 
worldly  condition,  if  this  can  be  done  lawfully.  I  am 
not  aware  that  the  gospel  kills  natural  desire  or  dis- 
courages self-help  and  personal  initiative,  and  bids 
men  take  what  comes  indifferently  or  lie  down  slavishly 
under  a  mass  of  outrageous  imposition  and  suffering. 
True,  St.  Paul  enjoined  upon  the  primitive  Chris- 
tians ^'be  content  with  such  things  as  ye  have";  yet 
it  is  noteworthy  that  he  did  not  tell  them  to  condemn 
or  decline  better  terms  could  they  get  them;  doubtless 
he  would  have  been  pleased  could  the  poor  drudges, 
mechanics,  peddlers,  handworkers,  wage-earners,  hew- 
ers of  wood  and  drawers  of  water,  who  made  up  the 
primitive  church,  have  achieved  an  independence  and 
freedom  from  their  narrow  limitations. 

This  virtue  of  contentment  is  susceptible  of  being 
misconceived  and  ought  to  be  guarded  against  per- 
version. Probably  it  is  true  to  say  that  a  glorious 
discontent  is  one  of  the  marks  of  a  great  soul.  Here, 
as   always,    everything   depends   upon    the   circum- 


A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL  19 

stances  and  pecuKarities  of  the  case.  A  contented 
attitude  of  mind  is  hardly  a  supernal  grace,  looks 
more  like  moral  cowardice  in  the  face  of  a  flagrant  evil, 
a  downright  wrong,  an  unnecessary  burden  that  can 
be  lightened  or  modified  or  quite  abolished.  There 
is  such  a  thing  as  righteous  indignation,  and  what- 
ever fact  or  state  of  facts  rouses  it  and  wakes  up  the 
dissenting  conscience  to  protest,  creates  a  situation 
where  contentment  is  a  crime,  and  agitation,  antago- 
nism, war  to  the  death,  if  necessary,  are  divine  duties. 
The  world  has  only  made  its  brave  headway  by  acting 
upon  this  belief.  Only  so  have  brazen  impostors  and 
cruel  tyrants  and  oppressive  governments  and  im- 
periums  and  absolutisms  that  have  lain  like  lead  and 
adamant  upon  subject  peoples  and  well-nigh  crushed 
the  hfe  out  of  them,  been  cast  off,  and  the  nightmare 
of  nations  been  broken.  Verily,  the  caravan  of  man- 
kind would  not  yet  have  got  far  on  its  long  pilgrimage 
had  it  not  been  for  this  restless,  tumultuous,  impatient, 
active  principle  of  dissatisfaction  wdth  fixtures,  in- 
stitutions, traditions,  precedents,  no  longer  workable, 
that  had  become  too  burdensome  to  bear,  that  re- 
strained freedom  of  person,  of  speech,  of  trade,  of 
contract,  and  threatened  civil  and  rehgious  liberty. 
So  it  is  clear  that  we  must  guard  this  virtue  of  con- 
tentment from  misconception;  evidently  it  cannot  be 
imposed  as  a  moral  commandment  and  binding  obli- 
gation, indiscriminately  and  under  all  circumstances, 
for  this  might  encourage  injustice,  oppression,  tyr- 


20  A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL 

anny,  arrogance,  selfishness,  any  intrenched,  inveter- 
ate abuse  of  power  and  wickedness  in  high  places,  or 
it  might  tend  to  perpetuate  a  straitened  and  impover- 
ished lot  which  a  little  exertion,  a  determined  resolve, 
would  soon  remedy  and  remove.  Indeed,  if  we  look 
/  at  it  narrowly,  discontent  appears  to  have  been  the 
mother  of  invention,  of  discovery,  of  progress,  of  im- 
provement and  enlargement.  It  has  pulled  the  world, 
from  age  to  age,  out  of  conventional  ruts,  out  of  ob- 
stinate prejudices  and  the  cake  of  custom,  out  of 
ignorance  and  obscurantism  and  the  brutality  of  fact, 
and  the  grip  of  immoral  power,  and  the  slaveries  of 
different  kinds  that  have  shut  up  men's  souls  and  bodies 
in  prison  and  riveted  them  as  by  'Hhe  wedges  of 
Vulcan."  Oh!  yes;  man's  dissatisfaction  with  what 
is,  has  always,  we  may  believe,  been  a  vivid  dynamic, 
that  has  shaken  the  foundations  and  toppled  the  towers 
of  many  a  fortress  of  pride  and  refuge  of  Hes  since 
the  world  began.  But  while  this  is  so,  it  is  necessary 
to  draw  a  distinction,  and  to  this  effect:  that  the 
main  thing  to  ascertain  in  any  matter  is  the  will  of 
God,  and  to  rest  in  that  as  a  finality.  That  dis- 
content which  spurs  us  on  to  effort  and  makes  every 
present  seem  ineffectual  and  mayhap  insupportable, 
compared  to  the  bright  ideals  of  the  imagination,  is 
well  enough  and  quite  legitimate  if  it  run  parallel  with 
the  lines  of  divine  purpose;  otherwise  it  is  time  and 
labor  lost.  Man's  ambitions  and  desires  are  boundless, 
endless;  everything  good  and  beautiful  and  attractive 


A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL  21 

solicits  him,  excites  cupidity  and  disturbs  his  equilib- 
rium; but  the  real  question  is,  Can  he  get  the  coveted 
object,  the  glittering  prize,  lawfully;  will  heaven  smile 
upon  his  effort  and  adventure;  are  the  stars  and  the 
angels  and  the  broad  currents  of  the  universe  on  his 
side?  This  is  what  everyone  needs  to  find  out.  In 
other  words,  one's  duty  and  happiness  alike,  consist  in 
accepting  the  providential  order  when  it  appears  to 
be  absolute,  and  doing  one's  best  under  that  rule. 
Here  Hes  the  sphere  of  contentment;  this  is  what 
limits  it,  manifest  destiny,  the  will  of  God,  as  declared 
by  events;  what  is  possible  and  practicable  and  law- 
ful. See  how  patriotic,  pious  Jeremiah  applies  this 
principle  to  the  condition  of  the  exiles:  ''Be  indus- 
trious," he  says,  "be  diligent,  be  happy  in  Babylon^ 
seek  the  welfare  of  the  great  city,  contribute  to  its 
prosperity;  because  it  is  settled  in  heaven  that  you 
must  stay  there  for  seventy  years."  Clearly  the 
teaching  is  that  what  everyone  needs  to  do  is  to  dis- 
cover, in  so  far  as  he  can,  the  plan  of  God  for  him — 
what  he  is  to  do  and  to  be — and  to  adjust  himself 
contentedly  to  that. 

The  other  topic  touched  upon  in  this  prophetic 
message  to  the  Captivity  respects  the  ulterior  purpose 
of  God  which  would  develop  in  due  time.  Speaking 
for  the  Most  High,  Jeremiah  adds  these  wonderful  and 
healing  words:  "T  know  the  thoughts  that  I  think  to- 
ward you,  .  .  .  thoughtsof  peace,  and  not  of  evil, 
to  give  you  an  expected  end. "     This  is  characteristic  of 


22  A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL 

Hebrew  prophecy,  that  however  dark  and  stormy  and 
ominous  and  wreck-laden  the  cloud  it  paints,  there  is 
always  a  silver  lining  to  it;  a  fringe  of  glory  round  the 
big  black  portent,  showing  that  the  sun  is  shining  full 
behind.  Judaism  was  a  religion  of  hope,  it  was  one 
long  prophecy  of  better  things  and  a  brighter  day. 
This  was  its  prime  advantage  over  the  ethnic  religions, 
and  this  sweet,  mellow,  optimistic  note  was  taken  up 
by  Christianity  and  is  filling  the  whole  earth  with  its 
soft  music,  with  its  blessed  prediction  of  a  coming 
kingdom  of  God.  See  how  hopeful  Jeremiah  is; 
he  advises  them  that  their  foreign  servitude  is  an 
episode  in  their  national  existence;  they  shall  re- 
turn to  Palestine  and  have  a  chance  to  retrieve  their 
shattered  fortunes.  And  so,  history  reports,  it  ac- 
tually came  to  pass.  Cyrus  put  an  end  to  the  Baby- 
lonian monarchy  and  Babylon  became  a  subject 
province  under  a  Persian  satrap,  and  the  prophet's 
forecast  was  vindicated.  And  if  we  are  permitted  to 
generalize  this  comfortable  message  of  the  great 
Jeremiah,  then  it  contains  a  truth  of  the  first  order, 
and  one  which  the  world  could  not  easily  spare,  to  this 
effect:  that  behind  every  particular  Providence  there 
is  a  larger  Providence,  and  that,  like  the  moon,  only  a 
segment,  or  at  most  a  hemisphere,  of  the  vast  orb  of 
divine  purpose  is  visible.  It  is  a  magnificent  thought 
that  no  present  is  ultimate.  God  is  evermore  moving 
out  of  every  present  into  a  wider,  more  opulent  future; 
His  plan  for  the  race  of  man  is  slowly  maturing  and 


A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL  23 

will  be  approved  by  the  intelligent  universe  when  it 
is  finished.  We  must  believe  that  what  He  said  by 
His  prophet,  to  the  men  of  Judah,  is  equally  true  of 
generic  man — of  the  children  of  men:  that  ^'His 
thoughts  toward  them  are  thoughts  of  peace  and  not  of 
evil,  to  give  them  an  expected  end,"  and  that  where 
'^sin  has  abounded,  grace  will  much  more  abound." 

Through  all  the  darkness  of  time  God  is  working 
toward  light,  through  all  its  confusion  and  disorder 
toward  harmony,  through  all  its  sin  and  misery  to- 
ward righteousness  and  peace.  Our  natural  faith  in 
the  essential  benevolence  of  the  divine  nature  makes 
it  necessary  for  us  to  believe  that  as  to  Israel  there 
came  a  restoration,  so  also,  to  this  world  of  man,  now 
exiled  from  the  vision  and  knowledge  of  God,  there  will 
come  a  day  of  restitution  and  return.  It  will  in  some 
coming  age  find  its  way  back  to  God.  It  cannot  be — 
the  religious  mind,  rational  thought,  cannot  think- 
that  God  will  suffer  sin  and  wretchedness  and  drastic 
disorder  to  perpetuate  themselves  on  earth  to  .all 
eternity.  They  must,  in  the  nature  of  things,  reach 
their  term  and  expire  by  limitation.  What  a  splendid, 
affluent  truth  this  is,  what  an  enrapturing  prospect, 
that  God  has  a  secret,  so  to  speak,  a  great  surprise, 
which  He  is  keeping  close;  did  not  tell  it  all  to  His 
prophets ;  did  not  tell  it  even  by  His  Son  Jesus  Christ, 
in  its  fullness;  but  which,  after  a  while,  when  the 
*' seventy  years"  are  accomplished,  when  the  centuries 
are  told  and  the  time  is  ripe,  will  suddenly  break  and 


24  A  LETTER  OF  COUNSEL 

empty  its  cornucopia  upon  the  world !  This  high  pros- 
pect is  our  anchor  of  hope  amid  gloom  and  storm. 
The  universe  is  at  the  core  good  and  making  for  good. 
The  divine  idea  for  man  is  perfect  and  flawless,  and 
sin  and  suffering  will  fade  "like  a  cloud-speck  from 
the  azure"  as  the  great  ages  move  onward  and  God's 
thoughts  become  more  legible. 

Nor  is  it  a  straining  of  the  prophet's  language  to  say 
that,  as  individuals,  those  things  of  which  we  complain 
as  irreconcilable  with  the  eternal  goodness  of  God,  will 
yet  by  a  wondrous  and  skillful  strategy  be  turned  to  the 
ultimate  advantage  and  advancement  of  all  who  ac- 
cept them  in  a  filial  and  religious  spirit.  God  will 
interpret  the  mystery  of  your  earthly  experience,  how- 
soever baffling  and  inexplicable  it  may  be.  There 
be  many,  an  innumerable  multitude,  who  are  unhappy, 
bewildered,  distracted,  anxious,  hopeless;  they  are 
not  what  they  would  be  or  where  they  would  be.  The 
only  recourse  for  such  is  this  truth  that  came  to  the 
captives  in  Babylon.  There  is  a  larger  Providence  be- 
hind the  particular  one ;  there  is  a  wider  view  than  the 
pinhole  view  that  we  take  of  the  world  and  life  and 
time.  In  the  last  resolution  of  the  matter,  we  must 
cast  ourselves  upon  the  heart  of  God.  We  must  be- 
lieve that  His  thoughts  concerning  us  are  good  and  not 
evil,  and  that  He  who  gave  us  His  Son,  shall  with  Him 
also  freely  give  us  all  things. 


GOD'S  HOPE 

For  the  creature  was  made  subject  to  vanity,  not  willingly,  hut 
by  reason  of  him  who  hath  subjected  the  same  in  hope. — 
Romans  8  :  20. 

NATURE,  both  the  earth  and  man,  the  whole 
terrestrial  system,  animate  and  inanimate, 
lies  in  a  state  of  imperfection  and  disability: 
this  is  Paul's  meaning,  probably,  in  saying  that  ''the 
creature  was  made  subject  to  vanity."  And  the  prop- 
osition is  unquestionably  true.  It  is  also  true  to  say, 
as  he  does,  that  this  came  about  without  the  consent 
of  man  or  nature.  Nature  certainly  has  no  moral  will 
or  intelligence  and  was  not  consulted.  Nature  is  a 
system  of  laws  and  uniformities  that  appear  to  act 
mechanically,  propelled  by  some  original  impulse  or 
energy.  No  one  blames  the  nature  of  things  for  being 
what  it  is;  it  is  not  held  responsible  for  any  blemishes 
or  faults  which  the  observer  thinks  he  detects.  A 
naturalist  may  say  that  he  could  have  made  a  more 
economical  earth  where  there  would  be  less  waste  and 
more  general  satisfaction,  which  is  very  likely,  from 
his  point  of  view.  And  St.  Paul  himself  indirectly 
admits  that  he  could  conceive  a  more  perfect  order  of 
nature,  abstractly  considered,  but  not  on  the  broad 
controlling  principle  that  he  ascribes  to  the  Creator — 

25 


26  GOD'S  HOPE 

hope.  Certainly,  we  can  imagine  that  its  Architect 
might  have  bowled  our  planet  into  space,  complete  at 
a  stroke,  and  left  it  to  spin  along  its  orbit  a  fairy  palace 
of  hght  and  music  and  intoxicating  odors,  a  place  of 
orchards  and  vineyards  and  enchanting  landscapes 
and  flashing  fountains,  with  nothing  to  ofTend  the 
most  fastidious  taste;  but  what  room  would  have 
been  left  for  hope  in  such  a  system  of  arrangements? 
There  is  relative  perfection  as  well  as  ideal  and  abso- 
lute perfection,  and  relative  to  the  great,  underlying 
conception  or  category  of  hope,  nature  may  be  perfect; 
whereas  absolutely  considered  it  may  be  manifestly 
imperfect.  Paul  certainly  allows  this  premise,  that 
we  are  living  in  an  incomplete  state,  and  one  open  to 
criticism  and  complaint,  judged  by  even  the  highest 
human  standards:  it  is  "subject  to  vanity."  And 
this  is  obviously  true.  The  explorer  goes  abroad  and 
reports,  upon  his  return,  strange  tidings.  He  tells 
that  he  found  morasses  undrained,  volcanoes  spouting 
flame  and  lava,  swampy  jungles,  boggy  acres,  desolate 
steppes,  lands  of  ice  and  avalanche,  of  arctic  night 
where  vegetation  dies  and  man  dwindles.  Tropical 
belts  also  he  reports,  where  sun  and  rain  waste  their 
strength  in  rearing  rank,  gigantic  growths,  and  man, 
overpowered  by  his  surroundings,  grows  timid  and 
lazy  and  superstitious,  and  cannot  thrive  or  build  up  a 
civilization.  Besides,  he  tells  of  huge  beasts  ramping 
and  bellowing  through  fair  garden  spots,  of  malarial 
regions  and  arid  lands  that  can  get  no  irrigation,  of 


GOD'S  HOPE  27 

cataracts  plunging  and  thundering  down  abysmal 
deeps  and  breaking  in  foam  and  spray  upon  nothing, 
turning  no  water  wheel,  running  no  machinery,  fer- 
tilizing no  meadow,  unutilized,  unseen  by  the  eye  of 
man,  just  enjoying  their  own  frolic  and  roar  in  soli- 
tude. Of  a  thousand  acorns,  one  becomes  an  oak; 
the  rest  are  trampled  by  oxen  or  crunched  by  swine  or 
rotted  by  rains.  There  are  soils  not  arable,  climates 
not  salubrious,  lands  that  lie  locked  in  polar  snow  or 
scorched  by  equatorial  heat.  Surely  Paul  is  right — 
subject  to  vanity  is  written  large  over  the  planet. 

Mankind  reminds  one  of  some  poor  family  huddled 
into  one  or  two  rooms;  certain  narrow  zones  only  are 
eligible  or  greatly  desirable.  The  civilized  races  have 
settled  the  temperate  and  genial  parts  of  the  earth,  but 
there  are  vast  outlying  areas  where  the  ax  of  the  pio- 
neer has  not  yet  penetrated,  and  where  the  white  man 
cannot  be  comfortable  and  contented  by  reason  of 
frost  or  heat  or  some  inimical  influence.  It  so  happens 
that  in  the  fairest  sections  of  the  globe,  where  the 
bloom  and  verdure  break  forth  most  profusely,  where 
the  groves  are  filled  with  the  song  of  birds,  and  their 
splendid  plumage  flames  afar,  where  sunsets  are  un- 
speakable and  nature  puts  on  her  beautiful  garments, 
you  will  not  find  man  at  his  best  estate,  because  the 
environment  is  not  such  as  to  contribute  to  his  per- 
fection. It  is  quite  obvious,  as  Paul  broadly  hints, 
that  God  did  not  intend,  judging  by  appearances,  to 
launch  a  world  that  should  stand  high  and  dry  above 


28  GOD'S  HOPE 

objection;  that  could  not  be  criticized  or  amended;  a 
world  in  which  there  should  be  no  waste  of  power,  of 
light,  of  fuel,  of  water,  of  room,  and  no  tendency  to 
decay  and  destruction.  And  the  reason  assigned  is 
that  the  divine  idea  involves  the  element  of  time  and 
the  principle  of  hope.  It  has  taken  shape  and  sub- 
stance through  the  lapse  of  ages  and  has  not  yet 
reached  its  full  orb  and  amplitude.  Moreover,  it 
seems  true  to  say  that  each  successive  platform  of 
progress  already  reached  is  vanity  compared  to  the 
plenitude  and  glory  of  God's  thought  gradually  un- 
folding before  the  intelligent  creation.  The  age  of 
the  reptile,  of  the  fish,  of  pachyderm  and  monster, 
the  age  of  iceberg  and  glacier,  the  age  of  carbon  and 
coal  formations,  the  time  when  trees  and  plants  and 
luxuriant  flora  had  it  their  own  way,  all  these  were 
vanity — a  low  stage,  compared  to  the  type  of  life  for 
which  they  were  the  preparation.  Over  the  fog  and 
ferment,  over  the  slow  risings  and  submergings  of 
lands,  and  all  the  increasing  stages  of  advance,  brooded 
a  divine  hope,  patient  and  inexhaustible,  waiting  until 
a  creature  would  step  forth  upon  the  scene  who  would 
be  able  partially,  at  least,  to  "justify  the  ways  of  God" 
and  to  see  some  good  provisional  reason  for  all  the 
muddle  and  misery  of  a  pre-Adamite  world. 

If  this  has  been  historically  the  course  of  things,  if 
the  earth  has  ripened  slowly  through  ascending  phases, 
instead  of  rolling  forth  from  the  hand  of  Omnipotence 
tapestried  and  upholstered  as  we  find  it,  it  is  easy  to  see 


GOD'S  HOPE  29 

how  the  whole  process  has  been  conducted  under  the 
power  of  an  eternal  hope;  that  thus,  in  this  slow, 
secular  manner,  the  disposition  and  purpose  of  God 
could  be  best  exhibited  to  intelligent  moral  creatures. 
For,  according  to  Christianity,  this  is  the  fundamental 
question :  How  can  God  reveal  Himself  most  surely  to 
mankind?  Can  this  end  be  accomplished  by  making 
the  earth  a  wide,  easy  hammock,  swinging  loose  in  the 
breeze?  Shall  man  be  rocked  in  the  sunlight  and 
balmy  air,  like  a  high-born  infant  in  an  im.perial 
cradle?  Shall  the  earth  be  a  trough  to  feed  his  animal 
appetite,  or  shall  it  be  a  school  for  the  training  of  a 
moral  will  and  for  the  instruction  of  an  intellect  that 
may  eventually  come  to  an  apprehension  of  God? 
And  St.  Paul  seems  to  say  that  God  chose  the  latter 
alternative.  He  said  virtually:  ''I  will  not  create  a 
set  of  ideally  perfect  conditions;  I  will  not  seal  up  all 
sources  of  pain,  of  trouble  and  toil  and  danger;  I 
will  not  gather  out  the  stones  and  prepare  a  road  for 
the  incoming  race.  I  will  come  at  this  consummation 
gradually,  I  will  commit  the  blossoming  of  My  purpose 
to  time,  I  will  wait  and  hope."  Not  the  quickest, 
shortest  route  it  is  true,  if  the  idea  was  to  realize  im- 
mediate results;  but  incomparably  the  best,  if  the 
moral  education  of  a  creature  capable  of  divinity  and 
of  "thinking  God's  thoughts  after  Him"  was  in  ques- 
tion. And  so,  in  fact,  the  human  family  found  almost 
everything  waiting  to  be  done,  and  in  this  way,  room 
was  made  for  patience,  for  skill,  for  constructive  im- 


30  GOD'S  HOPE 

agination,  for  sustained  effort  and  industry  and  for 
moral  qualities. 

We  can  interpret  the  whole  front  of  bristling  dif- 
ficulties and  hardships  which  nature  opposes  to  man 
under  this  rubric  or  conception  of  hope,  which  Paul 
declares  underlies  the  universe,  or  as  much  of  it  as 
we  know.  It  is  a  grand  picture  he  sketches — that 
back  of  all  the  dispensations  of  time  lay  hope,  as 
the  great,  broad  undercurrent,  the  primal  impulse  and 
energy  by  which  the  earth  and  its  cargo  and  contents 
were  carried  fo  ward  through  revolving  cycles  until 
man  was  reached,  who  could,  at  least,  dimly  under- 
stand and  trace  the  process  and  expound  the  situation. 
We  can  see  that  this  gradualism  was  the  wisest  policy. 
A  scene  like  this  is  not  altogether  what  we  would  like 
it  to  be;  it  is  not  wholly  adapted  to  gratify  our  in- 
dolence, our  appetite,  our  selfish  instinct;  but  it 
abounds  in  provocations  to  effort,  temptations  to 
virtue  and  opportunities  for  experiment  and  trial. 
It  is  a  scene  that  obviously  makes  room  for  hope. 
Hence  there  is  nothing  incredible  or  unscriptural  in 
the  thought  that  vast  periods  elapsed  before  the  crust 
of  the  earth  was  cool  enough  for  the  tender  foot  of 
man,  provided  we  add  the  complementary  clause  that 
this  subjection  to  vanity  was  not  an  end  in  itself, 
not  a  finaUty,  but  a  stage  in  a  great  progress,  a  degree 
on  a  vast  scale,  and  all  done  under  hope  and  in  anti- 
cipation of  something  better.  I  call  this  one  of  Paul's 
most   splendid,  affluent   ideas,   that   God   has   been 


GOD'S  HOPE  31 

steadily  working,  so  to  speak,  toward  human  perfec- 
tion, through  dateless  ages  and  through  all  the  chaotic 
disorder  of  time,  sustained  by  hope.  It  obviously  has 
been  the  divine  method,  not  to  finish  anything  at  a 
stroke,  not  to  project  any  great  creation  outright  and 
suddenly,  but  to  approach  it  by  ascending  steps,  bit  by 
bit,  here  a  little  and  there  a  little,  throwing  out  hints 
and  types  and  adumbrations,  and  so  advancing  by 
slow  yet  sure  stages  toward  the  complete  embodiment 
of  His  idea.  The  history  of  our  globe  seems  to  teach 
that  such  has  been  God's  treatment  of  it;  His  char- 
acteristic has  been  to  move  from  less  to  more,  from  the 
imperfect  to  the  perfect,  from  darkness  toward  light, 
from  fins  and  wings  to  the  human  arm  and  hand.  It 
has  not  been  His  plan  to  bring  in  and  set  up  any  final, 
finished  form,  all  at  once.  On  the  contrary,  there  have 
been  antecedents,  anticipations,  antitypal  rudiments 
of  the  thing,  partial  realizations  pointing  toward  the 
rounded  whole  and  accomplished  fact:  this  has  been 
the  way  of  God  in  nature.  It  has  been  ^'  made  subject 
to  vanity,"  because  each  lower  form,  stratum,  stage, 
dispensation  of  the  world  is  vanity,  compared  to  that 
which  is  higher,  more  complex  and  complete.  Hence 
it  comes  to  pass  that  the  spectacle  of  the  globe  is  one 
of  continuous  struggle  toward  loftier  levels,  higher 
categories  of  existence,  more  perfect  creatures  and 
more  glorious  realizations. 

This  word  '^ creature"  in  the  text  may  be  given  a 
wide  comprehension.     It  includes  man  and  beast,  as 


32  GOD'S  HOPE 

well  as  nature;  and  means  that  all  alike  were  sub- 
jected to  imperfection  and  discontent,  not  of  their  own 
accord  but  for  moral  reasons  of  sufficient  weight. 
Quite  true,  we  do  not  know  what  the  brute  is  capable 
of;  at  present  he  is  not  a  hopeful  case,  nor  susceptible 
apparently  of  great  improvement.  He  seems  to  move 
in  a  circle;  he  is  certainly  ''subject  to  vanity,"  and 
that  not  with  his  own  consent.  But  does  St.  Paul 
intend  to  say  that,  after  all,  the  animal  tribes  below 
man  are  in  a  promising  condition?  Very  likely;  the 
term  creature  or  creation  is  large  and  loose  and  widely 
inclusive.  At  any  rate  it  is  not  easy  to  ascertain  what 
collateral  effects  would  be  produced  by  a  regeneration 
of  the  human  heart  and  of  human  society.  A  wave  of 
righteousness  and  morality  that  would  Hft  the  rational 
creature  man,  might  quite  conceivably  carry  the  whole 
sentient  creation  higher  up  as  an  incidental  effect. 
Isaiah  foresaw  a  day  when  the  wolf  would  dwell  with 
the  lamb  and  the  leopard  he  down  with  the  kid;  and 
if  anyone  say  this  is  metaphor,  oriental  imagery,  he 
might  find  it  as  difficult  to  defend  this  view  as  one  who 
would  insist  that  Isaiah  predicted  a  literal  fact  yet  to 
be  realized.  Certainly,  Apostle  Paul  employs  here  a 
broad  general  term,  the  creation,  the  creature;  he 
docs  not  particularize,  but  leaves  it  vague  and  in- 
determinate; simply  saying  that  all  that  hes  under 
observation,  the  total  phenomenon,  the  entire  cos- 
mical  process,  this  mundane  economy,  is  on  trial,  so 
to  speak,  waiting  for  a  verdict,  waiting  to  see  what 


GOD'S  HOPE  33 

can  be  done  for  it,  into  what  it  may  grow,  and  what 
higher  conditions  it  may  reahze. 

But  if  the  lower  levels  of  Hfe  and  nature  fall  within 
the  scope  of  Paul's  vision,  much  more  and  chiefly  does 
it  contemplate  mankind.  For  man  is  the  most  sig- 
nificant creature  on  earth;  nor  can  there  be  any 
doubt  that  he  is  subject  to  vanity.  He  awakes  to 
self-consciousness  without  having  been  consulted, 
without  his  assent  or  the  slightest  reference  to  his 
wishes;  he  does  not  bring  himself  hither  and  he  will 
not  take  himself  hence.  Moreover,  upon  arriving  at 
the  stage  of  reflection,  he  discovers  that  he  is  in  an 
estate  of  pain,  unrest,  anxiety,  hardship,  and  daily 
threatened  with  dissolution  and  death.  True,  there 
are  offsets,  rebates,  compensatory  advantages  con- 
nected with  his  earthly  condition;  nevertheless  he 
perceives  the  force  and  appositeness  of  Paul's  state- 
ment that  he  came  into  these  present  temporal  rela- 
tions without  the  choice  of  his  will.  For,  unquestion- 
ably, there  are  fijctures  of  this  world  he  would  not 
allow  to  stand  if  he  had  his  way.  There  is  much  indeed 
with  which  he  has  no  quarrel, — possessions,  sources  of 
enjoyment  and  profit  which  he  would  let  stand,  since 
they  contribute  to  his  pleasure  and  increase  his  self- 
importance;  but  now  and  again  comes  a  death's- 
head  at  the  table,  there  is  a  skeleton  in  the  closet,  the 
slime  of  the  serpent  is  found  trailed  across  the  flower 
beds;  the  knell  of  a  departing  hope,  the  bursting  of 
a  gay  bubble,  the  wreck  of  a  name  or  of  a  fortune,  the 
3 


34  GOD'S  HOPE 

blighting  of  a  great  affection,  the  irrevocable  loss  of 
something  one  would  dearly  love  to  keep — such  com- 
mon experiences  as  these  cause  life  to  be  a  subjection 
to  vanity.  Man  did  not  choose  this  world  to  make 
his  great  experiment  here;  he  came  by  natural  law, 
which  is  the  expression  of  the  supreme  will.  And  as 
he  grows  in  age  and  stature  and  in  experience,  he 
realizes  that  he  is  subject  to  circumstances  and  stifling 
limitations  of  which  he  cannot  quite  see  the  final  end 
and  purpose.  There  are  so  many  passages  in  mortal 
life  of  which  we  fail  to  catch  the  meaning  and  object 
that  they  may  aptly  be  described  as  under  vanity; 
for  a  thing  is  vain  when  one  cannot  see  the  use  of  it, 
the  practical  ultimate  toward  which  it  tends  and  which 
explains  and  justifies  it.  Your  feeble  constitution  and 
poor  health;  the  hereditary  taint  or  tendency  that 
handicaps  you ;  your  failure  in  business ;  your  prodigal 
son;  your  inability  to  make  headway  in  the  world; 
the  hedging  up  of  your  path,  so  that  you  have  not 
been  able  to  do  the  things  you  would,  or  to  arrive 
where  you  want  to  be;  your  private  griefs,  disappoint- 
ments, heartaches — all  the  toil  and  tragedy  of  fife, — 
what  are  these  but  a  subjection  to  vanity,  and  that  un- 
willingly? Does  not  every  pilgrim  through  nature 
experience  a  personal  history  of  which  he  cannot  see 
the  bearing  and  ultimate  reason?  Would  not  every- 
one say,  in  a  sober  hour,  that  his  way  through  the 
world  has  not  been  of  his  choosing,  and  if  he  should 
live  it  over  again,  he  would  want  to  arrange  beforehand, 


GOD'S  HOPE  35 

and  definitely,  for  certain  rejections  and  exclusions. 
Paul  is  certainly  right;  God  does  not  ask  men  to  make 
a  better  scene  than  that  actually  provided ;  but  simply 
to  accept  it  and  do  the  best  with  the  accommoda- 
tions and  opportunities  furnished.  It  is  at  this  point 
that  human  accountability  sets  in.  One's  birthplace, 
parentage,  physical  constitution,  his  land  and  age,  his 
traditions  and  antecedents,  of  all  kinds — for  these  he 
is  not  responsible ;  high  above  the  range  of  his  choices 
certain  finalities  were  settled  forever,  and  had  back  of 
them  the  irresistible  might  of  the  universe,  which  is 
only  another  name  for  the  omnipotent  will  of  God. 
By  whatever  name — Calvinistic,  agnostic,  scientific — 
you  choose  to  call  it,  man  is  provided  for  and  handled, 
up  to  a  given  point.  He  is  treated  as  an  infant,  a 
minor,  who  has  no  right  to  speak  or  to  be  heard. 
Thus,  he  opens  his  eyes  in  Patagonia  instead  of  in 
England;  he  is  endowed  with  intellectual  power  of 
high  order,  or  is  of  low,  sluggish  mentaHty;  he  starts 
out  on  his  life  journey  with  a  full  outfit,  or  like  a 
threadbare  tramp  with  all  his  worldly  goods  in  a 
wallet  hanging  on  his  back.  He  is  born  into  these 
external  conditions,  he  did  not  deHberately  choose 
them.  The  elements  of  his  life  have  been  concocted  in 
the  great  crucible  of  divine  Providence,  and  he  has  not 
had  the  mixing  and  blending  and  balancing  of  them. 
All  this  is  notorious.  St.  Paul's  dictum  is  correct. 
We  catch  hold  of  the  mighty  levers  of  the  universe,  not 
by  their  handles,  but  lower  down;    the  origins  and 


36  GOD'S  HOPE 

reasons  of  things  are  hidden  in  darkness.  God  did 
not  stoop  to  my  soul  and  whisper,  "Where  shall  I  put 
you?  What  location  in  time  and  space  do  you  prefer? 
Will  you  dwell  among  antediluvians  or  postdiluvians? 
among  ancients  or  moderns?"  Ah,  no;  this  has  never 
been  the  way  of  God  with  man;  for  each  generation, 
for  each  individual,  it  is  now  or  never.  Our  part  is  to 
use  what  is  provided  and  to  ask  no  questions;  for  of 
how  many  hard,  stubborn  facts  may  we  speak  this 
word  of  Paul,  ''not  willingly."  "  I  did  not  choose  this  " ; 
"I  came  in  after  this  was  decided";  "I  did  not  agree 
to  this  arrangement."  It  is  quite  evident  that  there 
is  ''a  power,  not  ourselves,"  that  makes  tremendous 
assumptions  on  our  behalf.  But  we  are  encouraged 
to  believe  that  there  is  something  more  and  better 
coming;  there  is  a  larger,  more  comprehensive  fact 
that  roofs  all  others  in;  the  creature  was  made  subject 
to  vanity  "in  hope";  that  thus,  in  this  way,  the  finest 
results  might  be  reached.  Paul  believed  in  the  primal 
apostasy;  but,  in  this  sentence,  he  does  not  look 
backward,  but  ahead;  he  sees  "light  at  evening,"  he 
beholds  the  sun  going  down  amid  a  pomp  of  crimson 
banners,  he  says  that  God  has  hope  for  man.  What  a 
bold  figure  it  is!  What  an  intensely  human  way  of 
representing  a  supernatural  truth !  It  seems  to  mean 
that  God  has  been  conducting  through  ages  a  long 
and  tedious  process;  waiting,  watching,  hoping  that 
human  nature  would  prove  fit  to  live  and  reign  in  a 
divine,  immortal  kingdom.     And  there  is  good  reason 


GOD'S  HOPE  37 

to  think  that  this  hope  will  not  be  disappointed,  inas- 
much as  it  is  God's  hope.  This  is  one  of  the  great, 
prolific  ideas  of  the  Christian  revelation,  that  God  is 
waiting  for  men.  What  an  immense,  unspeakable 
thought  it  is,  that  crowned  and  glorified  saints  may 
issue  out  of  the  brittle  clay  of  humanity!  Do  not  dis- 
appoint God's  hope  for  you  by  apathy  and  unbelief. 
Do  nothing  that  will  make  God  despair  of  you. 


OUR  BROTHER 

If  a  man  say,  I  love  God,  and  haleth  his  brother,  he  is  a  liar: 
for  he  that  loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he  hath  seen,  how  can  he 
love  God  whom  he  hath  not  seen? — I  John  4  :  20. 

HERE  and  there  one  finds  a  statement  or  prop- 
osition in  the  Bible  which  does  not  appear 
self-evident,  and  in  which  the  conclusion  does 
not  follow  necessarily  from  the  premise.  In  such 
cases  one  needs  to  introduce  a  principle  or  law  that 
will  reduce  the  autonomy  or  seeming  contradiction 
and  make  acceptable  sense  out  of  the  sentence. 
Taken  at  its  surface  meaning,  it  may  not  commend 
itself  immediately  to  the  understanding,  but  under- 
neath there  lurks  a  central  and  vital  truth  that  har- 
monizes and  binds  up  into  a  unity  the  discordant 
members.  This  pronouncement  made  by  St.  John 
partakes  of  this  character.  It  does  not  seem  to  follow 
logically  and  of  rigorous  necessity  that  a  man  who 
loves  God  must  also  love  his  brother  man,  because 
there  lies  an  infinite  difference  between  the  divine 
perfections  of  God  and  the  human  imperfections  of 
finite  man.  At  first  glance,  it  is  quite  conceiv- 
able that  the  soul  might  be  drawn  out  in  admira- 
tion and  worship  and  moral  sympathy  toward  the 
image  of  supreme  Excellence,  while  it  is  exercised  by 

38 


OUR  BROTHER  39 

no  such  feeling  in  the  presence  of  defective  human 
nature,  which,  for  the  most  part,  stands  at  an  im- 
measurable distance  from  the  divine  character.  Even 
although  St.  John  meant  not  generic  man — not  man  as 
such — but  a  Christian  brother,  still  his  declaration 
would  seem  to  be  too  sweeping,  for  even  good  men  in 
the  evangelical  sense  often  exhibit  traits  and  charac- 
teristics that  are  far  from  amiable  and  attractive. 
It  is  clear  that  some  distinction  or  explanatory  clause 
must  be  applied  in  order  to  clear  up  the  apparent 
contrariety  between  the  text  and  our  experience,  for 
it  certainly  seems  possible  to  love  God  without  thereby 
committing  one's  self  to  the  love  of  man.  Neverthe- 
less St.  John  affirms  boldly:  '^ If  a  man  say,  I  love  God, 
and  hateth  his  brother,  he  is  a  liar :  for  he  that  loveth 
not  his  brother  whom  he  hath  seen,  how  can  he  love 
God  whom  he  hath  not  seen?"  But  that  is  exactly  the 
difficulty;  we  see  so  much,  too  much,  of  ''the  brother" ; 
i.  e.,  of  human  nature  and  its  Kmitations,  imperfec- 
tions, perversity,  selfishness,  unreasonableness.  Our 
intimate  knowledge  of  it  seriously  qualffies  our  kind 
feeling  for  it,  whereas  the  invisible  God  is  the  sum  of 
all  spiritual  perfections.  In  other  words,  there  does 
not  seem  to  be  any  standard  of  comparison  between 
God  and  man,  no  common  measure,  no  arguing  from 
the  one  to  the  other.  Yet  it  is  not  likely  that  St. 
John  would  be  so  categorical  and  decided  if  he  had 
not  seen  that  the  two  clauses  of  his  proposition  held 
together  and  that  there  was  no  radical  incompati- 


40  OUR  BROTHER 

bility  between  them.  Underneath  the  seeming  con- 
flict he  sees  a  peaceful  solution  and  a  philosophical 
principle  which  will  simplify  the  issue  and  adjust  the 
difference.  So  bold  and  absolute  a  statement  must 
have  had  fundamental  granite  to  rest  upon. 

In  order  to  get  at  this  and  exhibit  the  truth 
v/hich  the  passage  really  enshrines,  it  is  important  to 
inquire  as  to  the  nature  of  this  love  of  man  here  en- 
joined under  such  tremendous  sanction.  And  it  is 
material  to  remember  that  love  is  a  word  which,  like 
other  words  of  a  spiritual  content,  has  no  uniform, 
determinate  meaning;  it  means  differently  according 
to  the  capacity  and  sensibility  of  the  individual  who 
uses  it.  It  is  not  a  common  form  having  a  fixed 
significance;  it  is  a  metempirical  or  metaphysical 
word,  and  hence  somewhat  vague  and  capable  of 
degrees.  Thus  it  is  correct  to  say  that  an  epicure 
loves  savory  food;  it  is  also  correct  to  say  that  a 
good  son  loves  his  mother  and  a  patriot  his  country. 
But  the  love  is  of  a  different  kind  or  quality  in  each 
case.  There  is  no  hard  and  fast  definition  of  it,  save 
that  it  is  of  an  emotional  character,  a  matter  of  feeling 
and  not  purely  of  intellect.  Moreover,  as  between 
human  beings,  this  is  an  affection  capable  of  discrim- 
ination. There  is  the  love  of  simple  benevolence,  the 
love  of  man  as  man,  what  is  called  humanity.  Higher 
up  the  scale  is  the  love  of  congeniality,  of  complacency, 
of  character,  of  some  virtue  or  congeries  of  virtues 
which  makes  their  appeal  to  one's  nature  as  beautiful, 


OUR  BROTHER  41 

attractive,  irresistible.  This  phase  of  the  affection  is 
what  draws  souls  together  as  by  a  magnet,  and  founds 
friendships  and  clamps  kindred  minds  with  bands  of 
steel.  They  may  be  totally  different  in  most  respects, 
yet  in  each  there  is  a  nameless,  potent  charm  which 
captivates  the  other.  This  is  a  singular  fact  of  our 
constitution,  that  we  may  love  a  person  of  whom  we 
do  not  altogether  approve,  to  all  whose  opinions  we 
do  not  subscribe,  whose  conduct  we  would  not  imi- 
tate in  every  particular.  The  afffnity  cannot  be  de- 
fined or  described;  it  is  strictly  anonymous,  but  con- 
straining and  mighty. 

Observe  further  that  love  is  a  state  of  feeling  or  an 
attitude  of  the  soul  that  cannot  be  commanded  and 
is  not  subject  to  the  will.  It  does  not  spring  up  in 
obedience  to  a  behest  of  the  conscience.  You  cannot 
love  either  a  person  or  a  duty  or  a  calling,  or  even  an 
animal,  because  you  wish  to  do  so,  or  think  that  you 
ought  to  do  so,  and  reproach  yourself  because  you  do 
not  feel  as  you  should  in  relation  to  the  particular 
object;  love  is  an  affection  which,  if  it  exist  at  all, 
must  well  up  like  water  that  cannot  be  pent,  but 
bubbles  and  spouts  out  of  hidden  springs. 

It  is  obvious,  then,  by  this  analysis  that  the  love  of 
man  is  not  easy;  indeed,  requires  to  be  carefully  de- 
fined and  delimited.  If,  as  matter  of  fact,  this  faculty 
or  sentiment  of  the  soul  is  a  potentiality  that  must  be 
roused  and  kindled  by  an  appropriate  object  that 
makes   an   irresistible   appeal  to  it,   then  evidently 


42  OUR  BROTHER 

human  nature  in  the  mass  cannot  satisfy  this  condi- 
tion.    You  cannot  love  your  race,  the  whole  family  of 
man,  in  that  high,  supreme,  peculiar  sense  in  which 
you  love  individuals  whose  character  and  attributes 
and  personal  charm  directly  and  inevitably  set  up  a 
relation  of  sympathy  and  mutual  understanding  be- 
twixt you  and  them.     What  then  shall  we  do  with 
St.  John's  sentence?     How  is  it  true  that  if  "one  love 
not  the  brother  whom  he  hath  seen,  he  cannot  love 
God  whom  he  hath  not  seen"?     At  first  hearing,  it 
sounds  Uke  a  non  sequitur,  a  conclusion  not  implicit  in 
the  premise.     Yet  it  is  not  so  if  we  take  a  broad,  com- 
prehensive view  of  the  subject  and  consider  it  philo- 
sophically.    For,  in  a  large  way,  and  thinking  in  large 
units,  the  Apostle's  proposition  amounts  to  this:  that 
all  sound  morality  rests  upon  the  basis  of  religion,  and 
that  anything  purporting  to  be  religion  which  does 
not  issue  in  just,  kind,  humane,  honorable  treatment 
of  one's  fellow-man  is  false  and  counterfeit.     True 
religion  unquestionably  determines  one's  attitude  and 
relation  toward  the  world  and  everything  and  every- 
body in  it;    so  that  from  this  higher  standpoint  St. 
John  is  undoubtedly  right  in  his  contention  that  *'if 
a  man  say,  I  love  God,  and  hateth  his  brother,  he  is  a 
liar."     His  pronouncement  is  practically  equivalent 
to  that  of  St.  James,  ''faith  without  works  is  dead." 
This  is  a  matter  of  the  first  importance,  that  morality 
assumes  religion,  is  really  predicated  upon  it,  and  that 
true  religion  infaUibly  issues  in  moral  conduct  as  its 


OUR  BROTHER  43 

expression  and  outward  sign.  A  really  religious  man 
cannot  live  in  this  vast,  intricate  plexus  of  personalities, 
or  system  of  persons  and  things,  and  their  compHcated 
relations  without  taking  serious  account  of  his  envi- 
ronment. For  the  world  is  one  of  the  chief  ways  by 
which  we  reach  the  idea  of  God,  and  it  is  the  only 
place,  thus  far,  where  man  has  had  a  field  and  oppor- 
tunity to  glorify  Him.  This  world  of  humanity  is  a 
thought  of  God.  You  cannot  expel  reHgious  ideas 
and  make  anything  intelligible  out  of  it. 

Quite  a  debate  has  arisen,  and  a  collision  of  contrary 
opinions,  as  to  whether  morality  is  possible  without 
religion ;  there  is  no  question  as  to  whether  vital  religion 
can  exist  without  morality — this  is  generally  conceded 
to  be  strictly  impossible.  But  it  is  alleged  that  one 
can  discharge  all  duties  and  fulfill  all  righteousness  in 
respect  to  one's  fellow-men,  that  one  can  be  honest, 
just,  considerate,  generous,  faithful  and  true  without 
implying  any  conviction  as  to  God  and  the  unseen  and 
eternal.  One  can  stand  in  a  right  relation  to  man 
while  occupying  a  wrong  relation  to  God.  Now,  this 
very  widespread  and  popular  view  seems  to  be  negated 
by  St.  John's  definition  in  the  text.  Taking  the  larger 
and  profounder  conception  of  this  world  and  its 
ultimate  meaning,  it  is  impossible  to  deal  with  man 
in  a  right  and  adequate  spirit  unless  we  believe  him  to 
be  a  child  of  God,  a  creature  who  has  personality  and 
may  have  a  splendid  destiny.  Certainly  one  can  be 
civil,  pay  his  debts,  meet  natural  expectations,  be 


44  OUR  BROTHER 

fair  in  his  dealings,  a  good  citizen,  a  good  neighbor, 
without  being  a  transcendentaKst  in  any  sense  of  the 
word.     And  unquestionably  there  is  a  great  multitude 
whose  lives  are  irreproachable  and  a  pattern  for  imi- 
tation yet  who  are  ready  to  make  no  deliverance 
touching  religion,  and   confess   their   agnosticism  in 
reference  to  it.     This  indubitable  fact  leads  to  the 
inference  that  there  is  no  necessary  connection  be- 
tween morality,  which  concerns  itself  with  men's  rela- 
tions and  obligations  toward  one  another,  and  the 
specifically  religious  experience  which  deals  with  the 
divine  Being  and  enters  into  communion  w4th  Him, 
implores  His  favor,  contemplates  His  character  and 
seeks    His    fellowship.     Nevertheless,    as    the    text 
hints,  a  deeper  and  wider  view  of  the  vexed  question 
tends  to  set  up  suspense  of  judgment  and  modify  this 
plausible  opinion.     It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  men 
can  get  along  in  this  world  and  prosper  materially 
without  reference  to  God  and  His  requirements  or 
to  any  alleged  self-manifestation  He  has  made  to 
mankind.     At  the  same  time,  when  we  come  to  look 
at  the  matter  carefully,  critically,  St.  John's  position 
in  regard  to  it  gathers  formidable  strength:   "He  who 
loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he  hath  seen  cannot  love 
God  whom  he  hath  not  seen."     Why  not?     Because, 
after  all  is  said   and  done,  man   impKes  God,    this 
world  is  a  garment  or  manifesto  of  God,  time  is  only 
a  fraction  of  eternity,  Hfe  means  moral  accountability 
and  points  toward  judgment- to-come;    this  world  is 


OUR  BROTHER  45 

only  the  segment  of  a  vast,  infinite  system  whose  dome 
sweeps  out  of  sight,  and  of  which  we  merely  see  the 
foundations.  We  must  take  a  comprehensive,  synop- 
tic view  of  things;  we  must  go  behind  and  below 
the  temporal,  tangible  and  conventional,  and  strike 
the  ground  of  existence,  and  trace  this  terrestrial  ball 
and  all  it  contains  and  carries,  and  its  strange,  chaotic 
history,  to  its  unseen  source  and  cause.  Everything 
depends  upon  one's  definition  and  standpoint,  and 
St.  John  is  evidently  looking  down  upon  man  and  this 
secular  process,  called  the  world,  from  the  high  sanc- 
tuary of  religion.  His  contention  for  substance  is 
this :  that  man  is  a  spiritual  being  who  has  a  capacity 
for  the  knowledge  and  enjoyment  of  God.  He  be- 
longs to  God's  universal  family  of  intelligent  and  pro- 
gressive natures;  he  was  made  a  little  lower  than  the 
angels — even  although  he  may  seem  to  have  fallen  far 
from  that  ideal  altitude — and  if  you  would  trans- 
act with  him  as  he  deserves  and  as  his  case  demands, 
it  must  be  under  the  religious  definition  of  him.  If 
you  believe  in  God,  you  must  also  believe  in  the  higher 
possibilities  of  man;  if  you  love  God,  the  Fountain  of 
life  and  the  sum  of  all  perfections,  or  desire  to  love 
Him,  you  must  love  man  also;  not  for  what  he  actually 
is,  but  because  of  his  origin,  lineage,  sonship  to  God — 
a  relationship  not  yet  explicit  and  openly  acknowl- 
edged and  perfectly  evident,  but  implicit,  latent  and 
undeveloped  compared  to  what  may  be.  In  this  sense 
and  with  this  understanding  I  think  it  is  true  to  say 


46  OUR  BROTHER 

that  the  best  morality  involves  and  necessitates  reli- 
gious belief  and  feeling.  Or,  as  St.  John  puts  it 
broadly,  "if  any  man  say,  I  love  God,  and  hateth  his 
brother,  he  is  a  liar." 

You  perceive  there  is  considerable  to  be  said  for 
that  paradoxical  position,  owing  to  the  fact  that 
battered  and  defaced  as  man  is  in  many  specimens 
of  him,  by  virtue  of  personaHty,  he  becomes,  in  a 
real  sense,  a  partaker  of  the  divine  life.  Although 
planted  in  nature,  he  stands  above  nature,  because 
of  his  mysterious  constitution,  and  requires  to  be 
considered  accordingly.  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that  men  are  often  treated  as  though  they  belonged  to 
the  brute  kingdom  or  to  the  world  of  inanimate  things. 
In  practice  this  mystical,  solemn  fact  of  personality  is 
often  overlooked,  and  men  are  regarded  as  tools, 
hands,  for  promoting  the  interest  or  pleasure  of  their 
fellows.  This  conduct  is  as  damaging  to  those  who 
practice  it  as  it  is  to  the  helpless,  unhappy  victims 
subjected  to  ignominy  or  insolence.  Take  even  a 
hard,  coarse,  inferior  nature  and  address  such  a  one  or 
transact  with  him  in  a  gentle,  generous,  humane  spirit, 
and  directly  he  will  respond  to  it;  he  will  instantly 
recognize  it  as  a  tone  or  strain  to  which  his  ear  is  not 
used,  something  uncommon,  unearthly  about  it,  and 
a  fine,  deep  instinct  within  him  will  rise  to  meet  it. 
This  is  the  meaning  of  the  Hebrew  proverb,  "A  soft 
answer  turneth  away  wrath."  No  one  can  compute 
the  change  that  would  set  in  upon  human  society,  if 


OUR  BROTHER  47 

men  would  approach  each  other  and  deal  one  with 
another  under  the  second  great  commandment: 
''Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  It  would 
be  like  sunrise  on  a  stormy  sea;  for  every  man  has  a 
secret  chamber  that  can  be  unlocked  by  the  key  of 
kindness,  by  good  will,  by  the  practical  recognition  of 
the  fact  that  he  has  personahty.  Moreover,  is  this 
not  also  true,  that  although  the  love  of  God  comes  first, 
is  the  first  article  in  the  Decalogue,  yet,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  we  can  only  climb  up  to  the  idea  of  God  by  means 
of  man  and  through  our  knowledge  of  him?  He  is  an 
image  of  the  divine,  a  sort  of  shekinah,  in  which  deity 
dwells.  At  any  rate  man  is,  at  last,  even  with  all  his 
backwardness  and  blemishes,  the  major  premise  in 
the  argument  for  the  being  and  nature  of  God;  this 
much  is  generally  conceded.  And  it  goes  to  fortify 
St.  John's  position,  for  how  shall  we  know  what  it 
means  to  love  God,  if  we  do  not  understand  what  it 
is  to  love  man? 

Logically  then,  and  with  fine  propriety,  the  Apostle 
lays  it  down,  with  a  dogmatic  emphasis,  ''he  that 
loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he  hath  seen,  cannot 
love  God  whom  he  hath  not  seen."  The  fact  is, 
he  cannot  so  much  as  reach  the  idea  of  the  in- 
visible God,  the  Soul  of  souls,  the  infinite  Person, 
save  through  the  medium  of  humanity.  And  this  is 
a  cogent  argument  for  the  Incarnation,  which,  ac- 
cording to  Paul's  definition,  is,  God  manifest  in  flesh. 
The  first  great  commandment,  the  love  of  God,  would 


48  OUR  BROTHER 

hardly  seem  to  be  even  possible,  if  we  did  not  know 
and  experience  the  love  of  kind,  the  love  of  the  human 
heart  for  father,  mother,  child,  human  friend — the  love 
of  man.  Religious  thinkers  have  well  drawn  atten- 
tion to  this  distinction.  True  enough,  the  world  is 
filled  with  odious  people,  in  a  most  unattractive,  de- 
plorable condition — ignorant,  vicious,  mean,  con- 
temptible; this  is  the  appearance,  and  it  strictly  for- 
bids the  love  of  complacency  or  of  congeniality  or 
companionship.  But  even  so,  this  is  not  the  whole 
case.  Man  at  his  lowest  and  meanest  is  still  not  an 
utterly  negligible  and  despicable  being.  If  Christ's 
opinion  about  him  is  correct,  he  has  fine  possibilities 
and  may  have  a  great  future;  and  this  mystical  germ, 
element,  principle,  potentiality,  is  what  we  have  got  to 
look  at,  what  we  have  got  to  remember  and  treat 
with  consideration,  with  a  certain  reserve  and  defer- 
ence as  a  thing  that  has  intrinsic  worth  and  dignity. 
Surely  this  must  have  been  what  Jesus  intended  in 
proclaiming  the  fatherhood  of  God,  that  men  are  His 
children,  and  as  such  capable  of  receiving  of  His  full- 
ness. Much  of  Christ 's  time  was  taken  up  in  showing 
that  He  was  not  ashamed  of  men  and  women  even 
when  they  had  sunk  down  into  rags,  disease  and  dilapi- 
dation, both  physical  and  moral.  Now,  it  is  not 
likely  that  He  loved  these  outcast,  disheveled  people, 
the  refuse  and  sediment  of  Judea,  with  the  love  of 
complacency.  Naturally  He  and  they  were  not  con- 
genial companions;    they  were  separated  by  a  whole 


OUR  BROTHER  49 

diameter  and  dwelt  in  different  worlds.  Despite  this 
disparity  He  consorted  with  them,  until  He  became 
a  scandal  to  the  optimates  and  elite  of  Jewish  society. 
The  reason  of  it  is  to  be  found  in  that  great  saying 
of  His,  ''What  shall  it  profit  a  man,  if  he  shall  gain  the 
whole  world,  and  lose  his  own  soul?"  He  above  all 
the  sons  of  time  had  the  perception  to  estimate  the  in- 
finite worth  of  human  nature,  could  it  only  be  extri- 
cated from  the  coils  in  which  it  is  caught.  This,  I 
take  it,  was  why  He  loved  man,  not  for  what  he  is, 
but  for  what  he  may  become,  under  favorable  auspices 
and  influences.  We  cannot  understand  by  what 
spiritual  analysis  Jesus  reached  this  conclusion.  To 
our  common  and  cursory  glance,  human  nature  as  a 
whole  does  not  present  a  beautiful  or  hopeful  spec- 
tacle. Our  intuitions  are  not  penetrating  and  do  not 
go  deep  enough  to  seize  the  ultimate  truth  about  the 
human  spirit.  But  the  luminous  insight  of  Jesus 
pierced  below  the  crust  of  untoward  appearances. 
Beneath  the  rags  and  squalor,  behind  the  infallible 
signs  of  a  dissolute  and  undisciplined  life,  under  all 
the  rough,  outer  rind,  He  saw  essential  and  enduring 
worth.  And  so,  looking  out  upon  the  motley  crowd 
of  broken,  woebegone,  vagabond  humanity  that 
surged  around  Him,  He  cried,  ''Come  unto  Me,  all  ye 
that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden."  It  was  because  He 
saw  that  in  their  measure  and  to  a  degree  they  too 
might  become  sons  of  God  and  heirs  of  eternal  life. 
Amid  the  dust  and  debris  and  shavings  of  human 

4 


50  OUR  BROTHER 

nature  He  caught  the  gleam  of  a  priceless  pearl.  This 
is  the  way  to  love  men  and  to  help  them.  The  service 
of  man,  about  which  so  much  is  said  and  written  in  this 
our  age,  is  no  substitute  for  religion.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  needs  to  be  buttressed  and  supported  by 
religious  certainties.  Whatever  you  do  for  your 
world,  in  whatever  way  you  help  a  forlorn  or  needy 
brother,  in  whatsoever  form  you  give  yourself  to  the 
service  of  man,  remember  well  that  he  is  the  pilgrim 
of  the  universe,  and  moving  on  with  you  to  a  day  of 
reckoning.  No  other  creature  we  know  of  is  traveling 
the  same  road  or  is  on  so  long  a  journey.  Try  to  look 
upon  men  as  having  essential  value,  eternal  value, 
unspeakable  value  for  God.  He  sent  Christ  to  de- 
clare this  message  and  confirmed  it  by  His  cross  and 
Resurrection. 


MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE 

Then  said  Micah,  Now  know  I  that  the  Lord  will  do  me  good, 
seeing  I  have  a  Levite  to  my  priest. — Judges  17  :  13. 

THIS  chapter,  and  its  story  of  Micah  and  his 
Levite,  opens  a  casement  of  light  into  the  dis- 
jointed times  of  the  Jewish  judges.  Society- 
was  apparently  in  an  unhinged  and  unhappy  condi- 
tion; insecurity  and  private  feuds  prevailed ;  each  man 
redressed  his  own  wrongs;  a  crude,  tumultuous, 
anomalous  state  of  things  weltered  on  every  hand. 
The  ordinances  of  religion  reflected  the  secular  side 
of  life  and  partook  of  the  same  contradictory  char- 
acter. Thus,  the  context  introduces  the  reader  into 
the  country  of  Ephraim,  one  of  the  most  fruitful 
sections  of  Palestine.  A  woman  and  her  son  Micah 
with  his  household  dwelt  there  among  the  hills,  and 
it  occurred  to  them  to  use  some  of  their  means  to 
set  up  a  private  religious  establishment,  and  install 
images  to  represent  the  God  of  Israel  and  to  facilitate 
his  worship.  They  had,  besides  ''teraphim,"  small 
images — answering  to  the  tutelary  household  gods  of 
the  heathen — whose  function  it  was  to  procure  good 
fortune  to  the  family.  It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose 
that  they  added  to  these  any  of  the  idol-gods  of 
Canaan — Baal  or  Ashtaroth — but  undoubtedly  they 

51 


52  MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE 

seem  to  have  felt  the  need  of  a  visible  symbol  of 
the  unseen  and  eternal  God,  who  had  appeared  to 
Moses  at  Sinai.  Micah's  neighbors  also  frequented 
his  chapel,  finding  it  convenient  to  visit  a  local 
sanctuary:  for  although  Shiloh,  where  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant  stood  from  the  days  of  Joshua,  was  not  far 
distant,  many  doubtless  felt  it  irksome  and  a  hard- 
ship to  take  the  journey  thither.  Perhaps  this  was 
one  of  the  reasons  that  prevailed  upon  Micah  to 
start  a  service  of  his  own  and  to  set  up  a  shrine. 
At  any  rate,  the  incident  shows  that  religion  and  its 
observances  were  in  a  somewhat  chaotic  and  cloudy 
state;  nothing,  in  this  respect,  was  yet  definitely  and 
authoritatively  settled.  The  Jerusalem  temple  was 
far  away  in  the  future,  and  although  the  Ark,  that 
sacred  chest,  in  which  the  tables  of  the  Law  had  been 
deposited,  was  near  by  at  Shiloh,  covered  with  a 
purple  mantle,  and  reminding  the  people  of  an  heroic 
age — of  the  marches  of  their  forefathers  through  the 
sea  and  the  desert  and  across  Jordan — nevertheless, 
there  appears  to  have  been  no  compulsion  of  duty, 
and  no  Levitical  law,  commanding  them  to  attend 
and  present  themselves  before  that  venerable  piece  of 
furniture,  redolent  of  glorious,  heart-stirring  memories. 
Consequently  Micah,  the  man  of  Ephraim,  upon  his 
own  responsibility  built  his  chapel  among  the  hills, 
whither  not  only  he,  and  his  household,  but  also  his 
friends  and  neighbors  resorted  to  pay  their  homage  to 
God,  to  inquire  His  will  in  their  perplexities  and  dis- 


MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE  53 

couragements,  and  to  get  such  spiritual  satisfaction 
as  might  be  forthcoming.  But  Micah  directly  began 
to  feel  the  need  of  a  priest  or  some  celebrant  of  sacred 
offices:  some  person  must  be  found  to  conduct  prop- 
erly and  reverently  the  forms  of  divine  worship,  and 
to  ascertain,  if  possible,  the  mind  of  the  Most  High 
in  any  hard  matter  or  casuistical  question.  So  the 
pious  man  bethinks  himself  of  one  of  his  own  sons  to 
supply  this  felt  want;  probably  he  had  one  well 
fitted,  in  his  judgment,  to  fill  the  mystical  ofiice. 
Without  thought  for  the  moment  of  any  doctrine  of 
^'Aaronic  succession"  or  imposition  of  holy  hands  to 
this  young  man,  he  constitutes  him  master  of  re- 
ligious ceremonies  and  has  an  ephod  or  short  cape 
made  as  his  official  dress. 

It  all  goes  to  show  the  unripe,  irregular  state  of 
society  and  that  religion  and  its  worship  had  not  yet 
culminated  in  any  established  order,  imposed  by 
authority  and  enforced  by  sanctions.  Had  this  been 
the  case,  Micah,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  would  not  have 
had  recourse  to  such  a  hasty,  homemade  arrangement 
for  the  satisfaction  of  his  devotional  instincts.  He 
reahzed  that  he  must  give  expression  to  these,  he  would 
not  live  a  wholly  secular  life  without  any  recognition 
of  the  Jehovah  of  Sinai  and  the  Exodus,  and  this  was 
the  best  he  could  do,  ordain  one  of  his  sons  to  the 
sacred  ministry.  But  it  transpires  in  the  sequel  that 
he  was  not  quite  at  ease  in  his  mind;  the  young  man 
had  no  other  consecration  than  he  could  give  him,  no 


54  MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE 

higher  authority  than  he  could  confer,  and  this  did  not 
seem  to  Micah  sufiScient;  he  craved  something  more, 
was  enough  of  a  high-churchman,  as  the  modern 
phrase  runs,  to  desire  the  services  of  some  one  who 
belonged  to  the  ecclesiastical  order  or  caste,  a  lineal 
descendant  of  Aaron  or  a  Levite.  A  person  of  this 
description  and  pedigree  he  thought  would  better 
comport  with  the  dignity  and  sacredness  of  the  calling 
into  which  he  had  inducted  his  son,  for  lack  of  a  better 
candidate.  And,  fortunately,  such  a  one  appeared 
on  the  scene,  a  Levite  straying  through  the  hill 
country  of  Ephraim,  seeking  employment,  encountered 
Micah  in  his  suspense  and  unsatisfied  frame  of  mind. 
Doubtless  it  looked  to  him  like  a  veritable  provi- 
dential event,  a  heavenly  vision  to  which  he  must  not 
be  disobedient;  for  he  quickly  unfrocked  his  son,  and 
covenanted  with  the  Levite  for  ten  shekels  annually, 
beside  clothing  and  board. 

By  the  terms  of  the  Levitical  revelation,  the  Levites 
had  no  territorial  allotment,  except  that  forty-eight 
cities  in  different  parts  of  Canaan  were  set  apart  for 
their  use,  and  they  were  entitled  to  one-tenth  of  the 
produce  of  the  soil.  Those  cities  were  likely  their 
base  of  operations  and  rendezvous,  but  they  wandered 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land,  staying 
or  moving  on  according  to  circumstances,  and  acting 
as  tutors,  pedagogues,  private  chaplains,  advisers, 
or  in  similar  useful  capacities.  Under  the  mon- 
archy, it  appears,  they  took  their  turn  as  porters, 


MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE  55 

police,  vergers,  musicians,  in  and  about  the  temple; 
in  fact,  their  occupations  seem  to  have  imdergone 
considerable  change  in  process  of  time,  as  is  the  case 
with  all  callings  and  professions  of  men.  It  is  clear 
to  every  reader  of  the  Book  of  Judges  that  neither 
the  civil  nor  church  hfe  of  the  times  was  settled; 
people  made  shift  to  live  as  they  could  and  patched 
up  temporary  and  provisional  adjustments  to  answer 
the  exigency.  Deliverers,  dictators,  captains,  arose 
when  a  crisis  and  deadlock  of  some  sort  occurred, 
to  do  what  Alexander  did  with  the  knot — cut  it. 
What  time  invasion  or  disturbance  threatened,  some 
man  or  woman,  an  individual  of  extraordinary  faculty, 
vigor  and  dispatchfulness,  would  come  to  the  agitated 
surface  of  society  and  act  as  the  case  called  for,  most 
often  in  a  whirlwind  fashion  and  without  asking  leave. 
The  nation  of  Israel  had  not  reached  the  securer  forms 
that  came  in  with  the  kings.  Pillage,  high-handed 
outrage,  highway  assault  and  robbery,  private  war 
and  retaliation,  were  the  order  of  that  stormy  era, 
and  men  administered  justice  and  dealt  revenge 
according  to  opportunity  and  power. 

The  times  were  dark  and  boisterous ;  still  the  candle 
of  the  Lord  had  not  been  quite  blown  out — was  burning 
or  smoking  here  and  there  in  Israel.  This  Micah  of 
Mount  Ephraim  had  genuine  religious  instincts  and  evi- 
dently believed  in  an  overruling  Power  and  in  a  super- 
natural world.  Rather  than  have  no  priest,  no  official 
ecclesiastic,  he  would  as  a  temporary  expedient  create 


56  MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE 

one  outright.  In  fact,  the  priest,  or  mediator  of 
sacred  mysteries,  has  been  from  the  first  a  permanent 
fixture  in  the  world;  the  artisan,  the  trader,  the 
physician,  the  lawgiver  has  not  been  esteemed  more 
necessary  than  he  who  was  thought  to  transact  be- 
tween man  and  the  invisible  God  by  symbolic  acts 
and  ritual  observances;  nor  has  the  time  yet  come 
when  the  human  heart  can  dispense  with  religious 
signs  and  symbolism,  either  gross  and  grotesque, 
or  refined  and  appropriate.  Some  person,  posture, 
object,  that  reminds  men  of  an  unseen  sphere,  and 
flings  over  them  the  shadow  of  its  silence,  has  seemed 
to  be  a  permanent  need  of  human  nature  and  gives 
no  sign  of  waning.  Fear,  curiosity,  wonder,  specula- 
tion, reverence,  hope,  the  moral  affections  and  senti- 
ments, are  strong  motive  powers  in  man,  and  out  of 
them,  or  at  their  impulse,  have  grown  temples  and 
altars,  rituals,  priesthoods,  sacred  vestments,  sacred 
seasons  and  the  dim  cathedral  gloom  of  mediaeval 
Christendom.  All  these  things  have  come  about 
to  symbolize  and  satisfy  the  religious  feeling,  that 
grave  suspicion  in  the  human  heart  that  behind  the 
seen  and  temporal  lies  a  prodigious  mystery,  that 
*'the  riddle  of  the  painful  earth"  is  a  real  thing,  and 
that  there  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth  than 
man  dreams  of.  Out  of  the  soul  of  Micah  we  see  leaping 
this  world-old  instinct  as  soon  as  a  genuine  Levite 
comes  straying  through  the  mountains.  He  directly 
demands  his  credentials:  the  Levite  replies  that  he 


MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE  57 

comes  last  from  Bethlehem  in  the  tribe  of  Judah, 
and  is  looking  out  for  a  place;  whereupon  Micah 
professes  his  satisfaction  in  the  man's  story,  disrobes 
his  son  and  installs  the  Levite,  who  stood  in  a  direct 
line  of  descent  from  the  font  of  authority.  It  is  all 
quite  true  to  human  nature. 

Commercial  enterprise  has  taken  the  room  of  old 
patriarchal  and  nomadic  customs;  the  ten  silver  shekels 
given  to  the  Levite  annually  would  not  now  sufhce  for 
one  week's  board  and  lodging;  the  great  world  has  cast 
those  early  pastoral  simplicities,  as  the  insect  its  shell 
when  the  vital  functions  have  completed  its  organiza- 
tion :  a  dim  antiquity  intervenes  between  us  and  those 
far-off  days  in  Palestine; — yet  for  all  that,  the  priest, 
the  prophet,  the  minister  in  holy  and  mystical  things, 
still  stands  erect  in  the  world,  still  holds  his  ground,  has 
not  been  expelled,  his  part  is  not  yet  played:  not 
by  reason  of  his  own  personal  ability,  character  or 
merit,  not  because  he  is  necessarily  holier  than  other 
men,  and  more  sagacious,  not  because  he  actually 
knows  any  more  about  God  and  unknown  realms 
and  the  gateway  of  eternity  than  others  do,  or  has 
been  called  out  from  the  crowd  by  a  voice  or  a  vision, 
or  by  some  indicative,  infallible  sign  to  exercise  his 
office,  but  simply  because  the  religious  sentiment  or 
presentiment  is  still  alive  and  smolders  on  deep  in 
man's  heart,  flashing  and  crackling  now  and  then  and 
mounting  up  into  white  heat  under  the  provocation 
of  somewhat  unusual  and  mysterious,  or  formidable 


58  MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE 

and  alarming.  The  human  family  has  not  been 
able  to  dispense  with  signs  and  miracles  thus  far; 
that  is,  things  which  stand  as  tokens  and  reminders 
of  a  higher  dispensation  than  this  present  mundane 
one. 

All  subsequent  centuries  have  substantially  agreed 
with  Micah:  they  have  called  for  a  Levite,  a  priest, 
an  altar,  a  sacrament,  a  sermon;  some  object,  some 
exercise,  some  person  standing  in  relation  to  that 
infinite  mystery  which  enwraps  man's  life  on  earth. 
Organized  religion  has  burnt  very  dim  at  times; 
but  has  always  flashed  up  again  and  tricked  its  beams 
afresh  and  got  oil  and  fuel  even  out  of  its  hollows 
of  depression.  There  be  many  who  say  that  it  will 
be  outgrown  and  superseded  after  awhile,  in  some 
coming  illuminated  age,  by  the  advent  of  universal 
education,  by  science,  by  art,  by  a  skeptical  leaven 
and  the  spirit  of  inquiry,  or  by  some  yet  undefined, 
undiscovered  gospel  of  human  improvement;  but  if  so, 
this  will  be  a  new  thing  under  the  sun;  it  has  not  been 
the  history  of  the  past.  The  institutions  of  religion 
have  often  been  depressed  to  the  lowest  term;  they 
have  been  flouted  and  trampled  under  foot ;  they  have 
been  discounted  and  disgraced  by  their  alliance  with 
superstition,  credulity  and  cruelty;  they  have  been 
turned  into  engines  of  torture  and  have  discouraged 
and  retarded  the  advance  of  the  human  intellect, 
the  study  of  nature  and  the  knowledge  of  those  laws 
necessary  to  emancipate  men  from  ignorance  and  fear 


MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE  59 

and  squalor  and  misery.  That  which  was  in  dark 
ages  called  religion  has  confessedly  done  immense 
mischief,  has  inflicted  awful  sufferings  and  punished 
as  criminal  and  damnable  intellectual  opinions  which 
have  turned  out  to  be  absolute  truth  and  have  long 
since  become  undisputed  axioms.  A  bad  theology 
has  done  a  great  deal  of  damage  in  the  world  and 
made  havoc  of  human  happiness.  And  yet,  although 
these  somber  facts  are  perfectly  familiar,  organized 
religion  has  survived  them,  has  not  suffered  sensibly 
on  account  of  them;  its  empire  has  not  been  curtailed 
or  impaired,  it  is  still  erect  and  ebullient,  it  seems 
to  possess  an  inextinguishable  vitality.  Like  the 
tossing  sea  it  rises  and  falls,  ebbs  and  flows,  some- 
times running  dark  and  high,  sometimes  flashing  and 
rippling  along  the  shore.  It  seems  that  one  might 
as  well  think  to  keep  the  ocean  and  its  tides  out  as 
to  destroy  the  religious  idea  and  hope.  The  world 
consents  thus  far,  with  Micah  of  Mount  Ephraim, 
that  the  Levite  supplies  a  want,  is  a  necessary  fixture, 
is  worth  his  ten  silver  shekels,  would  be  missed  if  he 
were  to  drop  out,  stands  for  something  deep,  mystical, 
solemn,  which  men  would  better  remember  and  not 
forget. 

Observe,  further,  the  sense  of  security  betrayed  by 
Micah  in  view  of  his  successful  venture.  Upon  con- 
cluding the  bargain  with  the  Levite,  he  soliloquizes, 
"Now  know  I  that  the  Lord  will  do  me  good."  He 
congratulates  himself,  having  secured  the  services  of 


6o  MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE 

an  efficient  person;  this  he  beHeves  will  put  him  in  a 
more  hopeful  condition  before  God  and  go  far  to 
procure  the  divine  approbation.  What  shall  we  say 
of  Micah's  logic?  This  depends  largely  upon  his 
definition  of  good.  If  he  meant  that  because  he  had 
hired  a  Levite  to  pontificate  for  him,  to  officiate  at 
sacrifices  and  other  holy  offices,  to  instruct  his  house- 
hold, to  read  prayers,  to  do  what  a  Levite  could 
canonically  do,  that  therefore  his  barn  would  be  full, 
his  cattle  fat  and  sleek,  his  crops  prompt  and  plenti- 
ful, his  vintage  ripe  and  luscious,  and  his  goods  in 
peace — if  this  was  his  definition  of  good,  his  logic  was 
faulty,  the  inference  did  not  necessarily  follow  from 
the  premises,  as  the  melancholy  event  proved;  for 
the  Danites  came  later  and  carried  away  his  property 
and  his  Levite. 

Evidently  there  was  a  flaw  in  his  reasoning  if  he 
thought  that  high  secular  prosperity  must  follow  in 
the  wake  of  spiritual  sentiments  and  religious  exer- 
cises. This  is  one  of  the  skeptic-making  facts  of 
human  experience.  There  appears  to  be  no  strict 
causal  tie  between  piety  and  plenty.  Vile  men 
prosper  in  this  world  and  holy  men  fail.  Vice  is 
clothed  in  purple  and  virtue  in  rags;  it  is  a  familiar 
sight,  and  perhaps  as  much  as  anything,  makes  many 
think  there  is  no  God.  Religion,  however,  lies  on  a 
separate  plane,  has  its  own  ends  and  uses  and  its 
own  rewards,  and  these  are  not  of  the  economic 
and  terrestrial  kind. 


MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE  6i 

But  Micah's  affirmation  does  hint  at  a  general 
truth,  worthy  of  all  acceptation,  that  they  who  honor 
God  and  live  with  reference  to  His  will,  He  will 
eventually  honor.  This  is  surely  a  valid  inference 
and  a  true  attitude  of  mind,  a  seaworthy  principle 
amid  the  storm  of  time  to  which  men  may  tie  and 
trust.  Whoever  sincerely  desires  to  make  the  will 
of  God  his  will,  who  holds  his  ear  alert  and  his  con- 
science quick  and  responsive  and  his  soul  open  and 
hospitable  to  any  heavenly  vision  or  intimation  that 
may  come  to  him,  that  man  has  reason  to  believe 
that  God  will  not  be  unmindful  of  him,  that  some- 
when  and  somewhere  he  shall  be  openly  recognized 
and  receive  the  seal  of  his  faith  and  fidelity.  Broadly 
considered,  the  reasoning  of  this  man  of  Ephraim 
was  correct:  ''If  I  honor  God,  He  will  honor  me;  if 
I  follow  my  best  light,  I  shall  not  lose  my  way." 
This  is  a  prime  argument  in  favor  of  the  immortality 
of  goodness,  of  spiritual  excellence,  that  it  is  too 
divine,  too  much  like  God,  to  perish.  Hence  it  is 
lawful  to  say  with  Micah,  if  this  was  part  of  his 
meaning,  ''I  know  that  God  is  with  those  who  fear 
Him,  who  do  Him  reverence  and  obey  His  command- 
ments." 

But  Micah's  observation  on  procuring  the  Levite 
may  mean  that  he  relied  too  much  upon  this  acquisi- 
tion; in  other  words,  that  he  substituted  formalism 
and  ceremonial  righteousness,  an  external,  perfunctory 
performance,  for  genuine  conviction  and  real  interest. 


62  MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE 

This  mechanical  theory  has  crept  into  all  religions 
more  or  less  and  empties  them  of  reality  and  power. 
It  is  the  soul  of  idolatrous  forms;  it  got  into  Judaism 
and  has  invaded  Christianity.  When  Jesus  came  into 
Judea  He  was  scandalized  by  it.  He  saw  that  it  had 
overlaid  the  higher  ethical  element  and  intent  of  the 
law,  and  had  issued  in  a  laborious  trifling  about 
insignificant  matters.  He  denounced  the  church 
leaders  of  His  day  for  carrying  on  such  a  wretched 
parody  of  divine  things,  and  called  them  hypo- 
crites; by  which  He  did  not  necessarily  mean  that 
they  were  dishonest,  insincere  persons,  acting  a 
feigned  part  of  set  purpose,  playing  a  shrewd  game 
on  the  credulity  of  the  ignorant;  although  something 
like  this  is  what  the  name  hypocrite  imports.  In  its 
accepted  sense,  a  hypocrite  is  one  who  puts  on  the 
appearance  of  what  he  is  not  without  the  reality  of 
the  thing,  and  conscious  he  has  not  got  it,  seeks 
industriously  to  create  by  his  language  and  manner 
and  general  bearing  a  false  impression.  Now,  com- 
mentators are  not  unanimous  that  this  was  Christ's 
indictment  of  the  Pharisees.  For  it  may  be  that 
they  believed  heartily  in  the  value  and  efficacy  of 
their  pious  parades  and  performances,  in  their 
casuistry  and  moral  philosophy  and  microscopic 
refinements  and  punctilios.  It  is  not  certain  that 
their  phylacteries  and  other  gear  were  a  cloak  for 
mean  or  base  designs;  probably  the  vice  lay  deeper 
— in  their  very  conceptions  of  true  religion.     Their 


MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE  63 

view  of  it  was  essentially  formal  and  false.  They 
were,  it  may  be,  sincere  in  their  beliefs,  but  what  they 
believed  was  a  lie.  Their  religion  was  a  painted  shell, 
a  mask  and  mockery  of  the  true.  It  was  a  religion 
that  permitted  them  to  do  wrong  under  cover  of 
certain  idols  of  the  mind,  traditions,  definitions, 
dogmas  of  their  own  patent  and  creation.  And 
this  is  a  disease  that  may  be  called  epidemic;  it  is 
a  universal  tendency  of  men  to  put  something  plausi- 
ble and  imposing  in  the  place  of  true  conviction  and 
holy  living  and  a  genuine  experience.  We  try  to 
find  an  easy  groove  and  conventional  rut  along  which 
we  may  roll  back  and  forth  and  so  satisfy  the  con- 
science; we  seek  some  invention  that  will  relieve  us 
from  reflection,  watchfulness,  self-examination,  self- 
control  and  a  constant  endeavor  after  a  new  and 
higher  obedience;  anything  to  save  care  and  trouble, 
self-culture,  self-denial,  vigilance, — this  is  our  quest. 
It  is  the  core  of  all  superstitious  faiths  and  it  has 
blighted  Christianity, — this  tendency  to  rest  upon 
some  external  fact  or  fixture  or  arrangement,  such  as 
that  one  has  a  Levite  and  consequently  it  will  go  well 
with  him.  How  many  there  be  who  allow  themselves 
to  do  anything  they  list,  provided  only  they  have  a 
Levite  to  absolve  and  cancel  it.  But  this  is  not  the 
gospel,  not  the  Christian  idea.  It  insists  upon  the 
state  of  the  heart,  upon  truth  in  the  inward  parts, 
upon  pure  affections  and  tastes,  upon  moral  dis- 
positions and  the  spiritual  mind.     True  religion  does 


64  MICAH  AND  HIS  LEVITE 

not  stand  in  having  a  Levite;  it  is  nothing  outward, 
ceremonial,  mechanical;  it  is  such  a  faith  in  eternal 
things,  and  in  a  divine  kingdom,  as  cleanses,  controls, 
commands,  fashions  our  will,  orders  our  conduct, 
and  consecrates  our  life  to  the  service  of  God.  Noth- 
ing short  of  this  can  be  called  a  religious  conviction; 
it  must  have  vitality,  aim,  direction.  Have  you,  then, 
that  for  which  the  Levite,  the  church,  the  Sabbath 
and  all  sacred  symbolisms  stand — inward  purity  and 
rectitude,  faith  in  God,  a  hope  of  eternal  life,  through 
Jesus  Christ? 


THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE 

But  when  Herod  heard  thereof,  he  said,  It  is  John,  whom  I 
beheaded:  he  is  risen  from  the  dead. — Mark  6  :  i6. 

HEROD  the  Great  was  confirmed  king  of  Judea 
by  Octavius  Caesar  about  thirty  years  before 
the  Advent.  He  was  the  son  of  Antipater  of 
Idumea,  a  country  lying  south  of  Palestine,  and  was 
somewhat  Gentile  and  cosmopoHtan  in  his  tastes  and 
notions.  Both  by  his  novelties  and  cruelties  he  gave 
offense  to  the  Jews  and  was  out  of  sympathy  with  them 
in  several  respects.  Judea  was  a  sunny,  fat,  fertile 
land  and  one  of  the  most  desirable  of  the  provincial 
governments.  By  making  favor  with  Octavius,  Herod 
the  Great  managed  to  acquire  and  keep  power  in 
Judea,  for  he  was  a  clever  and  supple  as  well  as  an 
unscrupulous,  greedy  man;  it  made  little  difference  to 
him  who  reigned  at  Rome,  provided  he  held  office  in 
Judea.  He  died  about  the  time  that  Jesus  was  born 
in  Bethlehem,  and  his  government  was  subdivided 
among  his  four  sons,  who  reproduced  his  moral  image. 
They  were  not  men  easily  disturbed  by  the  proddings 
of  conscience  or  restrained  by  considerations  of  grati- 
tude, decency  and  honor.  They  belonged  to  that 
large  class  of  mind  that  believes  pretty  much  what  it  is 
expedient  to  believe,  for  the  time  being,  and  whose 
S  6s 


66  THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE 

convictions  and  course  are  as  unstable  as  the  weather. 
Personal  aggrandizement  and  pocket-prudence  are  the 
lamps  which  guide  the  feet  of  such  men  as  Herod 
and  his  sons.  The  physiological  law  of  heredity  got 
well  illustrated  in  this  family.  Among  his  other  ex- 
ploits Herod  Antipas  persuaded  the  wife  of  his  half 
brother  Herod  Philip  to  marry  him;  but  as  he  was  al- 
ready married  to  the  daughter  of  Aretas — a  kinglet  in 
Arabia — this  arrangement  naturally  produced  an  ugly 
complication;  a  war,  in  short,  was  waged  by  Aretas 
upon  the  perfidious  Antipas  to  avenge  the  divorce  and 
disgrace  of  his  daughter.  Nor  was  this  all,  for  the 
base  conduct  of  Antipas  provoked  the  trenchant  re- 
buke of  John  the  Baptist,  which  resulted  in  the  sub- 
sequent decapitation  of  that  intrepid  and  just  man. 

It  appears  clear  that  the  Herodian  family  had  been 
cradled  in  an  atmosphere  of  chicane  and  degrading 
sensuality;  they  were  men  of  coarse  passions  and 
despotic  temper;  but  corrupt  and  conscienceless  as 
Herod  was,  he  could  enter  speculatively  and  imagina- 
tively into  religious  themes.  The  New  Testament 
states  that  he  listened  often  to  John  and  always  with  a 
curious  interest.  The  questions  that  emerged  in  the 
Jews'  religion  were  not  unfamiliar  to  him,  and  although 
he  was  no  Moses  for  meekness,  no  Daniel  for  integrity 
and  no  Joseph  far  virtue,  yet  he  had  heard  of  them  all, 
and  had  some  preparation  to  enter  intelligently  into 
the  issues  and  interests  that  were  fermenting  in  that 
troubled  age  of  dawning  Christianity.     Bad  as  Herod 


THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE  67 

was,  he  could  appreciate  earnestness,  courage  and 
fidelity  and  knew  a  great  man  when  he  saw  him,  which 
probably  was  not  often.  The  record  supports  this 
view;  it  reads  thus:  ''Herod  feared  John,  knowing  that 
he  was  a  just  man  and  an  holy,  and  kept  him  safe. 
And  when  he  heard  him  he  was  much  perplexed  and 
heard  him  gladly."  This  is  high  praise  for  a  preacher, 
and  the  more  so,  coming  from  a  man  like  Herod  An  tipas. 
It  means  that  he  was  both  interested  and  pushed  upon 
inquiry.  There  was  evidently  a  mysterious,  mighty 
property  in  John's  m.ake-up  that  somehow  wrought 
upon  the  guilty  tetrarch;  made  him  feel,  perchance, 
that  it  is  not  the  whole  of  life  to  Kve ;  set  up  in  him  for  a 
season  good  resolves  and  earnest  aims;  rebuked  his 
avarice,  lust,  cunning,  cruelty,  craft  and  all  his  sordid 
principles  and  immoral  laxities,  and  aroused  his  con- 
science, seared  by  self-indulgence  and  physical  excite- 
ments. Indeed  so  profound  was  the  impression  made 
upon  Herod  by  the  personality  and  preaching  of  John 
that  he  never  really  forgot  him,  and  as  soon  as  he  heard 
rumors  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and  the  stir  he  was  making 
in  the  Jewish  world,  he  said  within  himself — and 
audibly,  too,  in  the  presence  of  his  courtiers:  "Ah!  this 
surely  is  John.  That  stern,  uncompromising,  upright, 
downright,  tremendous  man  has  returned  upon  us  clad 
in  his  camel-skin;  he  has  come  back  to  castigate  our 
vices,  to  expose  the  pretentious  shams  and  pompous 
fooleries  that  pass  under  the  name  of  religion;  he  has 
come  to  baptize  the  penitent,  to  curb  the  insolence  of 


68  THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE 

publicans  and  soldiers  and  to  preach  his  doctrine  of  an. 
impending  Messianic  kingdom.  This  is  John  risen  from 
the  dead!"  exclaimed  Herod.  Surely  an  odd  theory 
to  account  for  the  facts,  and  one  quite  untenable  in 
our  day.  That  a  man  whose  execution  he  had  himself 
ordered  had  come  to  life,— this  was  a  singular  explana- 
tion of  the  activity  and  fame  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
Nevertheless,  it  appears  to  have  been  Herod's  supposi- 
tion and  sober  belief. 

Speculatively,  at  least,  Herod  probably  held  the 
traditions  and  tenets  of  Jewish  theology.  Many  a 
man  whose  life  is  far  from  correct  accepts  intel- 
lectually the  doctrines  of  religion.  They  do  not 
practically  control  him,  but  he  assents  to  them  in 
theory  rather  than  to  their  opposites.  He  will  say 
that  he  believes  in  a  personal  and  holy  God,  in  heavens 
and  hells,  in  the  immortality  of  some  souls,  at  least, 
in  the  divinity  of  Christ,  and  in  the  Bible  as  containing 
an  authoritative  revelation  from  the  Supreme  Being. 
It  would  not  be  fair  to  set  down  every  bad  life,  like 
that  of  Herod,  as  being  necessarily  the  product  of  an 
atheistical  temper.  Multitudes  of  men  in  Christen- 
dom are  models  of  outward  decorum  who  yet  have  no 
faith  in  supernatural  religion  or  even  in  the  bare 
possibility  of  such  a  thing,  whilst  there  be  others  who 
are  blotched  by  vice  and  hurried  along  by  tempes- 
tuous passions,  who  have  a  very  decided  and  obstinate 
opinion  in  favor  of  Christianity.  You  can  never 
judge  with  absolute  certainty  by  what  appears  on  the 


THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE  69 

surface.  It  is  difficult,  in  this  matter,  to  draw  a  hard 
and  fast  hne  that  may  not  be  obHterated  by  some  ex- 
ception. Look  at  Herod  Antipas,  a  colossal  criminal 
who  wrought  iniquity  with  greediness,  the  spawn  of  a 
profligate  parentage,  and  yet  this  bold,  bad  man  arrives 
at  a  solemn  hour  wherein  the  old,  buried  doctrines  of 
resurrection  and  immortality  begin  to  stir  and  rumble 
and  wax  warm  and  finally  take  shape  and  break  forth, 
and  he  pronounces  Jesus  to  be  John  risen  from  among 
the  dead!  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  was 
not  honest  and  did  not  mean  to  be  taken  literally;  or 
that  his  utterance  was  a  hyperbole  of  rhetoric  and 
licensed  figure  of  speech.  I  interpret  it  rather  as  a 
capital  instance  of  the  vitality  of  religious  ideas.  He 
must  have  had  such.  Somehow  they  had  got  foothold 
within  him.  They  were  in  that  Jewish  air,  he  had  im- 
bibed and  assimilated  them,  and  suddenly  he  is  con- 
fronted by  a  crisis  which  nothing  will  explain  save  a 
religious  doctrine.  This  is  the  only  key  he  can  find  to 
the  situation,  and  behold  the  guilty  man  begins  to  talk 
about  the  resurrection  of  John  from  the  dead.  An 
abject  bit  of  superstitious  credulity,  we  say,  and  yet 
superstition  is  only  the  excess  of  a  religious  truth  or 
hope.  I  cite  it  as  an  eft'ective  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  men  are  prone  to  take  to  religion  in  the  last  resort. 
There  is  a  cry  out  of  the  deeps  of  human  nature  for 
some  certitude  beyond  present  possession.  With  all 
the  sunlight  that  floods  the  earth,  the  moonlight  and 
the  starlight,  thick  darkness  encompasses  man's  steps, 


70  THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE 

and  when  our  frail,  ignorant,  timid  nature  reaches  cer- 
tain turns  or  nodes  of  experience,  when  the  sky  dark- 
ens and  storms  lower,  and  the  earth  heaves  and  the 
Hghts  go  out,  and  the  clouds  fly  low  and  leaden  and  the 
trees  shed  their  leaves  untimely, — then  instinctively 
we  rise  to  truths  higher  and  diviner  than  those  which 
concern  this  mechanical  world.  There  come  seasons 
in  every  man's  career  when  he  grows  serious  and  reflec- 
tive, the  current  of  ordinary  thinking  is  broken  up 
into  eddies  and  rapids,  he  is  arrested  by  some  epochal 
event,  startled  by  a  strange  providence,  led  up  to  an 
emphatic  occasion,  confronted  by  a  sudden  emergency 
for  which  he  has  no  resource,  overtaken  by  a  sorrow,  a 
duty,  a  responsibility,  a  crisis;  a  state  of  things,  in 
short,  supervenes  for  which  he  finds  no  explanation  in 
the  natural  order,  and  in  view  of  which  he  can  get  no 
aid  and  comfort  out  of  natural  laws  and  probabiHties. 
Instinctively  man  then  flies  to  the  thought  of  a  higher 
control  and  of  eternal  Providence.  Ordinarily  we 
move  on  through  Hfe  without  any  conscious,  deliberate 
recognition  of  religious  truths.  But  now  and  then 
there  comes  a  cataract,  an  abrupt  break  that  shivers 
our  apathy  and  induces  serious  reflection.  A  hand- 
writing starts  out  upon  the  wall,  there  is  ''the  sound  of  a 
going  in  the  tops  of  the  .  .  .  trees,"  something  un- 
usual, solemn,  suggestive,  alarming  intrudes  itself  into 
our  humdrum  routinary  lives  and  calls  a  halt;  we  begin 
to  think  about  God,  Eternity,  the  winding  up  of  mortal 
things,  a  possible  life  beyond  the  grave,  the  necessity 


THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE  71 

of  repentance,  vigilance,  preparation,  of  setting  our 
house  in  order  and  the  expiry  of  our  stewardship. 
All  this  sometimes  happens.  It  is  as  when  Herod 
on  hearing  the  fame  of  Jesus  exclaimed,  ''This  is  John 
risen  from  the  dead." 

Again  this  remarkable  incident  indicates  indirectly 
the  influence  of  great  men.  Thomas  Carlyle  remarks 
in  his  ''Heroes"  that  "universal  history — the  history 
of  what  man  has  accompHshed  in  this  world — is, 
at  bottom,  the  history  of  the  great  men  who  have 
worked  here."  He  had  a  boundless  admiration  for 
those  executives,  pioneers,  captains,  and  thinkers  who 
stood  on  the  hinge  of  affairs  and  directed  them. 
Unquestionably  great  men  have  had  their  function, 
have  left  a  mark  upon  their  age,  have  voiced  the 
popular  unrest  and  discontent,  and  have  uttered  the 
word  or  done  the  deed  which  others  would  like  to 
have  uttered  or  done  but  could  not.  Their  force  has  not 
been  interred  with  their  bones,  but  has  survived  their 
natural  Hfe.  And  even  although  they  may  have  been 
born  out  of  due  time  and  so  undervalued  and  disrated 
in  their  day,  yet  if  their  character  was  sincere  and 
their  work  genuine,  they  have  lived  after  their  setting, 
and  have  "  flamed  again  in  the  morning  sky."  Great 
men  do  not  lose  much  by  death.  It  rather  conceals 
their  foibles  and  consecrates  their  virtues.  Once  in  a 
while  a  human  spirit  gets  tabernacled  here  in  time 
who  has  somewhat  to  say  or  to  do,  relevant  to  the  cir- 
cumstances and  general  condition  of  things,  an  indi- 


72  THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE 

vidual  of  keen  and  rapid  insights,  of  indomitable  will, 
of  unabashed  courage,  of  incorruptible  integrity,  a 
strong,  safe,  luminous,  oracular  soul,  who  seems  to 
carry  authority  and  to  understand,  with  a  large  com- 
prehension, what  is  wanted  and  how  to  supply  it. 
Such  a  one  becomes  an  unspent  inspiration,  so  that 
when  the  world  arrives  at  a  crisis  that  recalls  his 
worth  and  services,  he  starts  to  recollection,  takes  form 
and  movement  and  lives  again  as  a  rule  or  referee. 
Herod,  when  he  heard  of  Christ's  miracles,  cried,  ''This 
is  John."  What  an  unconscious,  splendid  eulogy  it 
was!  Here  was  a  man  whose  public  life  covered  only 
one  year,  and  yet  in  that  short  space  he  produced 
such  an  impression  upon  a  king,  living  in  scarlet 
sins,  that  coarse  and  heartless  as  that  king  was, 
when  another  arose  treading  in  the  footsteps  of 
the  dead  prophet,  he,  in  whose  ears  were  still  ringing 
the  stern  rebukes  and  trenchant  invective  of  the 
murdered  preacher  of  righteousness,  imagined  that  he 
had  returned  to  earth  and  had  come  out  of  the  ghostly 
glimmer  of  the  grave  to  rebuke  him.  What  a  volume 
of  conclusive  evidence  for  John's  intrinsic  greatness 
and  simple  fidelity!  It  shows  that  singleness  of  aim, 
fearless  devotion  to  principle  and  moral  earnestness 
are  not  thrown  away,  are  indeed  elemental  forces  in 
this  world.  They  who  rise  above  the  belt  of  appetite 
and  self-interest,  and  self-reference  and  its  urgencies 
and  live  along  the  higher  ranges  of  the  soul  need  no 
stone  nor  epitaph.     They  leave  a  trailing  light  of 


THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE  73 

nebulous  splendor  to  show  where  they  go  down;  the 
influences  they  start  flow  onward  into  the  future. 
You  must  take  high  ground,  if  you  would  effectuate 
anything,  even  a  Httle;  you  must  Kve  under  the  power 
of  convictions  that  transcend  the  passing  hour;  you 
must  be  faithful  and  true,  if  you  would  at  all  survive. 
Solomon's  proverb  says  that  ''the  name  of  the  wicked 
shall  rot,"  he  has  no  claim  upon  the  race;  but  there  is 
vitality  in  goodness,  in  high  example,  in  moral  courage 
and  consistency,  in  a  pure  and  holy  life.  I  believe 
in  a  higher  immortality  than  this,  but  this  is  the  mun- 
dane side  of  it.  The  self-denials,  the  heroisms,  the 
unselfishness,  the  gentleness,  the  generosity,  the  meek- 
ness, patience,  humility — all  the  great  spiritual  quali- 
ties of  consecrated  characters  come  up,  now  and  again, 
in  the  remembrance  of  those  who  knew  them;  they 
are  cited;  they  exert  a  profound,  enduring  influence. 
John  the  Baptist  rises  from  among  the  dead.  Have 
you  not  found  it  so?  Do  you  not  often  think  of  one 
or  another  who  is  gone,  but  who  still  rules  you, 
affects  your  decisions,  shapes  your  course,  sustains 
your  courage,  and  hovers  around  you  like  a  presence? 
Mark  again  that  this  theory  of  Herod  respecting 
Jesus  illustrates  the  power  of  conscience  and  its  func- 
tion of  rebuke.  Behold  here  a  significant  phenomenon, 
a  torpid  conscience  galvanized  into  a  flutter  of  life 
by  the  bones  of  a  dead  prophet!  The  existence  in 
man  of  moral  discernment  and  of  the  categorical 
imperative  ^'I  ought,"  is  a  notable  fact.    It  carries  a 


74  THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE 

strain  of  prophecy.  Discrimination  is  the  ground 
form  of  human  thought  and  the  first  attribute  of  the 
mind.  First  of  all  we  must  be  able  to  tell  one  thing 
from  another;  this  is  the  beginning  of  knowledge  and 
of  moral  accountability.  And  in  the  sphere  of  moral 
ideas  and  issues,  discrimination  is  a  notch  higher  than 
the  general  discernment  of  differences  between  com- 
mon things.  Some  have  sought  to  deduce  it  from 
utiHty  as  its  principal  and  origin.  Utility  is  that 
property  in  an  action  or  thing  which  tends  to  increase 
the  benefit,  advantage  or  happiness  of  the  person  con- 
cerned in  it.  So  that  when  philosophers  undertake 
to  generate  the  moral  sense  from  the  idea  of  utility, 
their  doctrine  is,  that  the  reason  why  men  feel  that 
they  ought  to  do  this,  and  ought  not  to  do  that,  is  be- 
cause certain  acts  and  courses  of  conduct  in  human 
experience  and  through  long  ancestral  ages  have  been 
found  on  the  whole  beneficial  to  mankind,  whereas  the 
opposite  courses  have,  according  to  average  and  secu- 
lar experience,  been  productive  of  pain,  discomfort  and 
evil,  in  some  shape.  Out  of  this  pretty  uniform  ex- 
perience, say  some  ethical  thinkers,  has  grown  the 
moral  mind,  "the ought  and  the  ought  not"  of  moral 
philosophy;  and  so  man,  in  the  evolution  of  ages,  got 
what  he  calls  a  conscience.  This  plausible  version 
does  not,  however,  satisfy  all  the  conditions  of  the 
case,  in  the  opinion  of  other  thinkers.  Immanuel 
Kant  called  instinct  the  voice  of  God  speaking  below 
the  equator  of  reason  and  pointing  the  animal  to  its 


THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE  75 

proper  end  and  the  preservation  of  its  species.  In 
like  manner  the  unique  faculty  of  conscience  in  man  is, 
a  fortiori,  the  authentic  voice  of  God — the  Supreme 
Good — in  the  soul,  approving  or  reproving  and  mak- 
ing man  a  free,  accountable  will,  not  a  link  in  a  chain 
of  causation,  a  puppet  on  a  wire,  or  a  bead  on  a  string. 
Man  is  set  down  here  a  bundle  of  powers  and  passions, 
and  among  them  the  power  of  choice,  and  the  necessity 
for  choice,  amid  the  motives  and  materials  with  which 
the  scene  abounds.  And  this  moral  power  may  be 
stone-dead,  comatose,  partially  instructed,  or  illum- 
inated, quick  and  alert.  Everything  depends  upon 
the  use  one  makes  of  it.  Observe  the  play  of  it  in 
Herod.  When  the  right  stimulus  was  applied  it  rose 
up  and  responded  with  energy;  it  fluttered  with  fright 
and  beat  wildly  like  a  bird  against  its  cage.  But 
while  it  acted  normally,  Herod's  was  not  an  enlight- 
ened conscience ;  he  erred  in  the  application  of  a  sound 
principle.  No  promise  is  binding,  in  morals,  when 
the  keeping  of  it  would  involve  a  higher  criminality 
than  the  breach.  This  distinction  would  have  re- 
lieved Herod's  embarrassment  had  he  applied  it. 
True,  he  had  made  a  large,  unconditional  promise,  but 
Herodias'  daughter  had  no  moral  right  to  demand 
the  head  of  John  the  Baptist.  Herod  could  easily 
have  evaded  the  insolent  challenge  of  this  woman  had 
he  reflected  that  no  promise,  no  stipulation  or  con- 
tract, can  authorize  a  violation  of  the  fundamental 
laws  of  morality.    But  he  lacked  either  the  percep- 


76  THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE 

tion  or  the  courage  to  take  this   ground,  probably 
both — certainly  the  latter. 

Yet,  callous  and  morally  incrusted  as  the  tetrarch 
undoubtedly  was,  he  still  was  not  totally  insensible  to 
the  twinges  of  an  indignant  conscience,  not  wholly 
narcotized  and  incapable  of  comprehending  the  true 
status  of  affairs.  For  when  he  hears  of  Jesus,  he  says, 
*'This  is  John  whom  I  beheaded."  What  a  solemn 
record  it  is!  Behold  the  luxurious  Herod — a  skeptic 
touching  many  high  truths,  a  selfish,  hard  man,  whose 
law  was  appetite,  whose  life  was  shame — awaking  sud- 
denly to  discover  that  Almighty  God  has  intrenched 
in  man's  nature  a  law,  an  oracle,  that  may  issue  its 
decrees  irrespective  of  our  convenience  or  comfort, 
and  break  in  mufSed  thunders  around  the  soul. 
Herodias  and  her  charming  daughter,  the  birthday 
festival,  the  flow  of  wine,  the  fantastic  evolutions  of 
the  dance,  the  inspiration  of  the  music,  the  military 
with  flashing  helmets  and  nodding  plumes,  the  beauty 
of  the  women  and  the  stalwart  strength  of  the  men,  all 
the  coquetry  and  repartee,  the  laughter  and  frolic,  of 
that  giddy  rout  had  faded  before  his  eyes;  but  when  he 
hears  of  Jesus,  then  out  of  the  guilty  chambers  of 
memory  John  the  Baptist  stalks  like  a  gaunt,  formid- 
able specter  into  his  affrighted  presence.  Is  it  not  a 
vivid  picture?  Is  it  not  a  wonderful  scene?  The  ban- 
quet hall  deserted,  the  echoes  of  it  long  died  away,  the 
last  footfall  long  departed,  the  foolish  jests  and  vo- 
luminous oaths  of  the  company  now  forgotten,  the 


THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE  77 

costumes  all  folded  and  laid  aside,  John  himself,  the 
intrepid  herald  of  the  new  era,  slain — and  yet,  behold 
Herod,  the  imperial  sinner,  shaken  as  with  an  ague  fit, 
tormented  by  superstitious  forebodings,  and  declaring 
as  his  deliberate  opinion  that  the  rugged,  righteous 
prophet  of  the  Jordan  had  returned  to  earth,  in  the 
person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth!  If  you  would  see  the 
power  of  a  bad  conscience ;  if  you  would  know  whether 
in  this  world  men  are  ever  reminded  of  their  sins,  call 
for  Herod  and  ask  him  how  he  came  to  think  of  John 
when  he  heard  of  Jesus.  You  may  call  him  a  super- 
stitious Jew  living  in  a  twihght  time,  but  those  words 
''whom  I  beheaded"  are  significant.  Not  simply 
''this  is  John  Baptist,"  but "  this  is  John  Baptist  whom 
I  beheaded.^''  There  lies  the  emphasis.  Not  Hero- 
dias,  the  prime  mover,  not  her  bewitching  daughter, 
but  I — /  beheaded  him.  While  one  said  of  the  newly 
risen  prophet  "He  is  Elijah,"  another  "Jeremy,"  and 
others  this  or  that  old  Hebrew  censor  who  hurled  his 
caveats  and  anathemas  at  the  license  and  corruption  of 
his  age ;  while  public  rumor  had  its  theory  concerning 
Jesus,  Herod  Antipas  cries,  "  This  is  John  whom  I  be- 
headed, risen  from  the  dead."  The  truth  is,  a  guilty 
soul  is  liable  to  constant  irruptions.  Anything  may 
remind  us  of  our  sins.  The  night  winds,  as  they  creep 
from  leaf  to  leaf,  seem  to  rustle  with  them;  the  inno- 
cent stars  in  their  lofty  stations  seem  to  know  them; 
the  silent  forests,  the  haps  and  mishaps  of  the  great 
world,  anything,  at  any  time,  may  find  a  tongue  and 


78  THE  POWER  OF  CONSCIENCE 

recall  them  to  us.  How  true  to  nature  is  Herod's 
experience!  The  sudden  appearance  of  a  young 
Nazarene  preaching  with  wondrous  originality  and 
directness  and  working  strange  cures, — this  is  enough 
to  quicken  Herod's  memory  and  arm  his  conscience. 
It  is  the  same  with  all  of  us.  Beware  of  any  folly,  im- 
prudence or  crooked  way.  Beware  of  any  act  which 
you  cannot  approve,  for  such  things  have  a  mon- 
strous longevity.  Like  the  writing  of  flame  on  the 
wall  of  Belshazzar's  palace,  the  letters  glow  and  burn 
and  start  ever  afresh  into  coherence  and  legibility. 
We  carry  within  ourselves  the  odious  materials  of 
remorse  and  retribution.  An  unseen  Hand  with 
magic  brush  may  touch  up,  at  any  time,  the  faded 
lineaments  of  long-departed  years,  and  cause  them  to 
live  anew  before  our  uncomfortable  gaze.  Remember 
Herod  Antipas! 

The  death  of  John  Baptist  fell  in  with  the  supreme 
purpose  and  did  not  delay  or  frustrate  the  world's 
hope.  The  world  and  its  destiny  are  safe.  The  race 
will  slowly  ripen.  No  weapon  whetted  against  eternal 
Providence  can  prosper.  God  rolls  on  the  planets  and 
the  ages  and  they  revolve  securely  around  His  throne, 
but  we  may  co-work  with  Him.  We  may  stand  with 
the  kingdom  of  light  as  against  the  kingdom  of  dark- 
ness, with  John  as  against  Herod,  with  Christ  as 
against  Mammon. 


PETER'S  QUESTION 

Then  said  Jesus  unto  the  twelve,  Will  ye  also  go  away? 
Then  Simon  Peter  answered  him,  Lord,  to  whom  shall  we 
go?     Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life. — John  6  :  67, 68. 

MORE  explicitly  than  was  usual  with  Him, 
Jesus  publicly  announced,  one  day,  the  na- 
ture of  His  errand  to  the  world.  The  lan- 
guage He  held  offended  certain  and  was  the  procuring 
cause  of  a  secession  among  His  adherents.  A  number, 
how  large  is  not  stated,  who  had  followed  Him  with- 
drew, and  for  a  while  His  popularity  seemed  shaken. 
Like  almost  all  great  public  men  and  influential 
minds,  Christ  experienced  in  His  day,  indifference 
and  even  desertion,  where  formerly  there  had  been 
enthusiastic  loyalty  and  unbounded  admiration.  It 
may  come  early  or  late,  but  it  is  given  to  few  to 
hold  power  and  influence  without  a  break  to  the  end. 
All  successful  workers — in  any  material  or  direction — 
must  lay  their  account  with  occasional  reverses; 
they  may  esteem  themselves  happy  if  they  do  not 
utterly  fail.  What  we  call  popularity  is  a  quick 
gourd  growing  out  of  the  fickle  whim  and  impulse 
and  the  passing  need  of  the  hour.  When  the  hour 
passes  and  the  particular  hunger  is  fed,  and  the  reign- 
ing fashion  makes  room  for  its  successor,  then  that 

79 


8o  PETER'S  QUESTION 

which  satisfied  it  must  depart  also.  The  next  de- 
lirium that  seizes  upon  the  general  mind  will  call  for 
some  other  treatment — another  prophet,  a  different 
policy.  No  one  is  wise  who  builds  confidently  upon 
such  a  fluctuating,  changeful,  stormy  element  as 
human  prejudice,  passion  and  self-interest.  You  had 
better  get  ready  to  decrease  gracefully  and  with 
good  humor,  for  that  reverse  process  may  set  in, 
at  any  day — it  is  a  wind  that  veers  suddenly.  It 
is  not  solid,  thick-ribbed  ice  you  tread  on,  but  a  thin, 
papery  crust,  full  of  air  holes  and  uncertainties. 

Thus,  the  Evangelist  states  that  the  enthusiasm 
which  Jesus  created  was  wide  and  deep  and  moved 
all  Palestine.  Nevertheless,  it  too  had  its  "solution 
of  continuity,"  and  an  occasional  thaw  that  threatened 
to  break  up  the  hopes  of  His  friends  and  to  overwhelm 
His  cause.  One  of  these  critical  moments  is  reported 
in  the  context.  Christ  had  been  drawing  a  parallel 
between  Moses  and  Himself,  and  that  too,  somewhat 
disparaging  to  Moses.  This,  of  course,  was  a  bold 
stroke  in  the  citadel  of  Judaism.  For  Moses  was  the 
founder  of  the  Hebrew  commonwealth;  a  nimbus 
girt  his  brow,  he  was  a  colossal  figure,  a  saint,  a  hero, 
the  greatest  name  in  Israel.  But  Jesus,  in  the  hear- 
ing of  the  crowd,  takes  higher  ground  than  Moses 
stood  on,  and  affirms  His  own  preexistence,  which 
naturally  led  some  to  inquire  whether  His  father's 
name  was  not  Joseph,  and  how  then  He  could  come 
from  heaven.     Furthermore,  He  reminds  them  that 


PETER'S  QUESTION  8i 

their  ancestors  who  ate  manna  in  the  desert  had 
been  long  dead,  and  that  any  who  would  live  that 
life  which  is  life  indeed,  must  eat  ^  His  flesh  and 
drink  His  blood.  This  astounding  information  also 
startled  the  bystanders,  who  remarked,  *'How  can 
this  man  give  us  His  flesh  to  eat?"  All  this,  and 
likely  much  more,  took  place  in  the  Capernaum 
synagogue  in  the  hearing  of  many  who  had  been 
temporarily  drawn  within  the  circle  of  Jesus'  influence 
by  His  originality,  charm  and  strange,  potent  mag- 
netism, or  by  that  perennial  craving  in  human  nature 
for  the  loaves  and  fishes,  which  His  miracle-working 
power  occasionally  gratified. 

Most  probably  it  was  this  type  of  character  that 
was  piqued  and  repelled  by  Christ's  large  assump- 
tions. They  were  not  the  original  college  of  the 
twelve  disciples,  but  others,  well  disposed  at  first, 
who,  fascinated  by  the  wonderful  personality  of  Jesus, 
eager  to  see  and  hear  what  He  would  do  and  say, 
carried  along  in  the  broad  current  of  the  crowd, 
astonished  by  His  genius  and  courage,  pleased, 
mayhap,  by  His  tremendous  invectives  against  the 
pomposity  and  cant  of  the  Pharisees,  waited  to  see 
whether  He  would  set  up  as  another  Judas  Maccabeus, 
and  warrior  figure  of  an  heroic  era.  It  is  easy  to 
comprehend  that  if  such  were  their  views  and  ambi- 
tions, if  they  were  essentially  shallow  people,  they 
would  be  sorely  disappointed  by  a  manifesto  like 
this  at  Capernaum.  The  world  always  abounds  in 
6 


82  PETER'S  QUESTION 

those  who  do  not  care  to  take  things  seriously,  who 
want  to  be  pleased,  to  have  their  sensations  fed,  their 
curiosity  slaked,  their  interests  promoted,  but  who 
instinctively  shrink  from  probing  deep  into  a  matter 
and  ahght,  like  the  butterfly,  on  the  surface,  ready  to 
leave  at  a  moment's  warning  if  the  situation  gets 
inconvenient  or  uncomfortable.  Such  do  not  really 
want  to  learn,  to  improve,  to  correct  their  faults, 
to  amend  their  lives,  to  make  religious  progress; 
they  merely  want  excitement,  self-gratification, 
pleasure  in  some  form;  so  the  tide  of  their  loyalty 
will  slacken  and  become  refluent,  should  anything 
happen  that  they  do  not  like  and  that  offends 
their  vanity  or  self-love.  Such,  doubtless,  was  the 
case  of  those  people  who  finally  forsook  Christ. 
They  were  not  in  real  sympathy  with  Him;  they  had 
no  spiritual  sentiment  or  insight;  He  was  too  mystical 
for  their  material  minds,  too  contemplative  for  their 
impatience.  His  doctrine  about  being  greater  than 
Moses,  and  coming  out  of  heaven  and  from  God 
in  a  unique  sense,  and  about  His  flesh  as  being  more 
nutritious  than  the  historical  manna  that  had  body 
enough  in  it  to  carry  the  old  Hebrews  to  the  pasture 
lands  and  milch  kine  of  Canaan — all  this  was  not 
what  they  wanted  to  hear,  did  not  suit  their  tastes; 
they  were  chagrined,  shocked;  their  political  hopes 
— if  indeed  they  had  a  shrewd  suspicion  that  Jesus 
was  the  Man  of  Prophecy — were  blighted,  and  so 
they  quietly  withdrew.    And  it  may  have  been  a 


PETER'S  QUESTION  83 

deep  disappointment  to  many  of  them.  It  is  never 
agreeable  to  anyone  to  awaken,  as  from  a  dream, 
and  find  that  a  great  affection,  ideal  or  hope  has  faded 
into  the  light  of  common  day,  that  the  bread  or  the 
apple  has  turned  to  ashes  in  one's  mouth:  this  is 
never  a  pleasant  experience — albeit  a  common  one. 
Very  often  it  is  safer  to  make  such  a  discovery  in 
time,  but  the  awakening,  the  disillusioning  process, 
the  melting  and  thawing  season,  the  crumbling  and 
falHng  of  the  idols,  the  withering  of  the  flowers,  the 
setting  of  the  stars  and  suns, — this  is  likely  to  be 
dispiriting.  Many  a  one  has  been  unstrung  and 
ruined  by  it.  Many  a  man  has  cherished  some 
glittering  ambition,  and  ardent  hope,  and  has  come 
within  a  handbreadth  of  it,  but,  missing  it,  has  dis- 
appeared forever.  We  assent  to  the  general  abstract 
truth  that  all  is  vanity,  but  the  actual  ascertainment 
of  this  certainty  in  any  concrete  case  lowers  vitality 
and  flings  a  yellow  hue  over  Kfe.  For  the  heart  of 
man  lives  chiefly  by  hope,  by  imagination,  and  when 
these  fires  are  damped  or  drawn  and  the  golden  future 
becomes  the  leaden  present,  and  our  millennium 
turns  out  to  be  a  mirage,  infested  by  lantern  flies, 
it  requires  both  fortitude  and  faith  to  bury  the  dead 
past,  and  make  a  fresh  and  cheerful  beginning. 
Many  have  not  been  able  to  do  it,  but  have  sunk 
down  into  a  world-weary  pessimism  and  skeptical 
despair.  Other  things  beside  revolutions  do  not  go 
backward.     You  cannot  quench  any  bright,  shining 


84  PETER'S  QUESTION 

light  and  not  leave  the  place  darker  than  before  it 
was  kindled.  No  one  of  common  clay  can  see  his 
visions  of  creature-good,  in  any  kind,  contract  and 
shrivel  without  serious  thoughts  about  this  system 
of  things  amid  which  he  lives.  So,  it  must  have  been 
a  disheartening  process  to  which  those  adherents  of 
Jesus  were  subjected,  when  in  place  of  affirming  their 
immense  expectations  and  coming  forth  as  a  political 
Messiah  and  simple  Jewish  patriot.  He  fell  into 
mystical,  incomprehensible  meditations  concerning 
God,  His  Father,  and  His  own  relation  to  the  world. 
They  were  deeply  disappointed.  Nor  was  He,  any 
longer  in  their  opinion,  the  man  for  the  national 
crisis.  It  is  not  surprising,  considering  what  flimsy 
stuff  human  nature  is  made  of,  that  they  forsook  Him. 
There  are  two  bonds  that  hold  men  together: 
one  is  the  cohesive  property  of  a  common  interest, 
common  plunder  or  booty,  the  fact  that  by  stand- 
ing together  they  can  get  more  and  keep  more  than 
by  standing  apart  and  alone;  and  the  other  prin- 
ciple is  the  law  of  congeniality,  of  moral  sympathy 
and  mutual  understanding.  This  is  the  more  digni- 
fied and  honorable  motive  of  the  two,  because  it 
rests  upon  moral  and  not  material  grounds,  it  creates 
lifelong  friendships,  it  often  results  in  sacrifices,  self- 
denials,  heroisms,  high  consecrations  to  which  mer- 
cenary and  selfish  unions  are  unequal.  Individuals, 
between  whom  there  subsists  that  nameless  thing 
which  we  call  intellectual  or  moral  sympathy  are 


PETER'S  QUESTION  85 

held  together  by  a  stronger  cement  than  money  value, 
or  even  blood  relationship.  It  is  an  instinctive,  spon- 
taneous drawing  of  the  soul  of  one  to  another;  it 
is  a  true  elective  affinity. 

This  lack  of  penetration  and  insight  it  was  which 
made  for  alienation  between  Christ  and  certain  of 
His  earlier  admirers.  They  stood  on  different  planes; 
their  ideas  and  ambitions  were  disparate;  their 
remedy  for  dissolving  Judaism  was  not  the  same; 
their  eye  for  proportions  and  perspective  was  not 
His;  so  that,  not  being  able  to  account  for 
Him,  they  gave  Him  up.  The  sudden  departure  of 
these  dissatisfied  people  cast  a  passing  shadow  over 
the  spirit  of  Jesus.  For  a  moment  He  seems  over- 
taken by  alarm  lest  their  example  should  be  infectious 
and  the  whole  body  of  His  disciples  slip  out  of  His 
grasp.  The  human  mind  occasionally  behaves  like 
the  brute  mind.  Just  as  a  drove  of  cattle,  as  by  an 
atmospheric  or  inexplicable  influence,  is  sometimes 
seized  with  panic  and  goes  rushing  and  crashing  along 
over  rocks  and  brush  and  slough,  so,  too,  bodies  of 
men,  parties,  communities,  whole  nations,  appear  to 
be  bitten  at  times  by  a  mania,  and  break  out  into 
some  folly  or  fanaticism — an  Eastern  crusade,  a 
French  Revolution,  a  speculative  bubble,  or  financial 
or  economic  heresy — a  craze  of  some  sort,  that  must 
run  its  course  before  sober  reason  can  return  and 
resume.  Not  a  constant,  calculable  quantity  is  man, 
but  easily  affected  and  warped  by  his  surroundings. 


86  PETER'S  QUESTION 

Hence  the  rise  and  reign  of  transient  fashions  and  the 
temporary  dominance  of  some  ruling  idea  or  custom. 
The  contagion  of  example  is  widespread  and  subtle; 
man  is  imitative,  fickle,  full  of  envy  and  emulation, 
and  the  most  senseless,  inconvenient  form  or  ordi- 
nance will  get  a  standing,  if  only  society — through 
its  leaders  and  chief  fuglemen — sets  the  copy.  You 
can  no  more  account  for  it  than  for  the  fright  which 
falls  upon  a  run  of  stampeding  steers.  The  fever  is 
on  and  must  accomplish  its  course.  The  human 
brain  is  a  delicately  hung  organ,  easily  overset,  full 
of  vapors  and  feathers,  not  broad-based  and  steady, 
but  liable  to  be  unhinged  and  fanaticized.  This 
notorious  feature  of  our  frail  humanity,  mayhap, 
had  something  to  do  with  the  gloom  that  settled  upon 
Jesus.  How  deep  the  canker  of  disaffection  had  eaten, 
and  upon  whom  He  could  surely  count,  of  this  He 
appears  to  have  been  in  doubt,  for  upon  the  heel 
of  the  vanishing  malcontents  the  great  Teacher  turns 
to  the  Twelve  with  the  anxious  inquiry,  ^' Will  ye  also 
go  away?" 

It  is  a  moving  scene;  there  is  a  tenderness,  a  tear 
in  the  voice,  a  tremor  and  state  of  suspense  depicted, 
as  though  He  were  really  apprehensive  lest  He  should 
be  quite  abandoned  and  left  alone.  As  if  He  had 
said.  What  shall  I  do,  if  you  all  go?  You  are  my 
choice  friends;  you  did  not  choose  me,  I  chose  you 
out  of  all  whom  I  might  have  selected  to  stand  by 
me  in  my  great  contention:  should  you   leave  me, 


PETER'S  QUESTION  87 

whither  shall  I  turn?  With  whom  can  I  share  my 
cares  and  sorrows  and  hopes?  There  is  a  stroke  of 
pathos  here;  it  was  evidently  a  moment  of  intense 
feeling.  At  the  same  time,  observe  the  grand  and 
fearless  inconsistency  of  the  gospel.  Jesus  had  just 
said  that  it  was  not  possible  for  anyone  to  receive 
His  doctrine  cordially,  except  he  were  divinely  in- 
fluenced. "All  that  the  Father  giveth  me,  shall  come 
to  me."  Yet  He  descends  directly  out  of  that  great 
firmamental  principle  into  the  kingdom  of  second 
causes  and  free  moral  agency,  and  betrays  solicitude 
lest  His  mission  be  wrecked  by  the  defection  of  the 
twelve  disciples,  as  if  the  organization  of  religion 
and  the  eternal  purpose  of  God  depended  upon  the 
fidelity  of  Peter,  James,  John,  Bartholomew,  Andrew 
and  Thomas.  A  piece  of  inconsistency,  one  would  say. 
Nor  does  Jesus  clear  it  up ;  He  leaves  both  statements 
standing. 

The  fact  is,  all  great  truths  lie  open  to  objec- 
tions. All  interests  cannot  be  harmonized.  No 
high  doctrine  is  perfectly  bomb-proof  and  flawless. 
Truths  of  the  first  magnitude,  supernatural  truths, 
are  too  large  and  voluminous  to  be  crammed  within 
the  compass  of  narrow  human  definitions  and  finite 
experience.  They  are  diffused,  dim,  nebulous,  vapor- 
ous, elastic,  decline  to  be  poured  into  molds  and 
vessels  and  set  to  stand  intact.  He  who  thinks  to 
make  all  his  highest  beliefs  fit  snugly  into  each  other 
will  likely  find  that  there  are  antinomies  he  cannot 


88  PETER'S  QUESTION 

reduce  and  contradictions  he  cannot  reconcile,  and 
that  much  of  his  hne  is  open  to  attack;  there  is  a 
weak  and  exposed  point  somewhere  at  center  or 
circumference  or  along  some  diameter.  You  need 
not  hope  to  explain  all  that  you  believe  and  feel  must 
be  true.  It  is  not  worth  while.  Men  can  afford  to 
be  grandly  inconsistent  when  it  touches  matters  that 
pertain  to  God,  to  the  higher  reason,  to  the  best 
hopes  of  our  race.  These  are  huge,  transcendent, 
divine,  unspeakable,  cannot  be  stuck  like  penny 
candles  in  our  lanterns,  cannot  be  carried  without 
overflow  in  our  shallow  pans. 

Even  Christ  was  careless  about  harmonizing  funda- 
mental truths ;  He  let  their  antagonisms  stand.  At  one 
moment  He  declares  that  His  cause  is  absolutely  safe, 
that  God  is  with  Him ;  He  leans  against  the  granite  of 
eternity.  He  has  no  fear.  He  will  win  as  many  hearts 
as  God  wills.  The  next,  He  turns,  like  a  dejected, 
defeated  man  to  His  disciples,  and  inquires  anxiously 
whether  they  too  intend  to  leave  Him:  What  shall  I 
do,  when  you  have  gone?  How  can  I  ever  replace  you? 
An  unreconciled  discrepancy,  we  say;  but  what  of  it? 
The  world  is  not  yet  finished.  It  is  not  yet  a  rounded 
system.  There  is  no  music  of  the  spheres  save  what 
poets  feign.  Storm,  ice,  earthquake,  tidal  waves  are 
still  licking  the  earth  into  shape  and  modifying  its 
contour;  everywhere  are  sharp  curves,  shaggy  edges, 
raveled  ends,  tangled  skeins,  dark  passages.  Unity, 
symmetry,  completeness,  are  not  yet  reached. 


PETER'S  QUESTION  89 

And  this  same  rough-hewn,  inorganic,  unfinished 
aspect  of  things  is  impressed  upon  the  Bible 
and  Christianity.  In  Christ  Himself  a  dualism  is 
apparent.  At  times  He  is  intensely  human,  again 
superlative  and  superhuman.  Now  the  peculiar 
affections  and  liabilities  of  our  common  nature  assert 
themselves  forcibly  in  Him;  at  another  time  He 
becomes  deep,  mystical,  unearthly,  enigmatical,  an- 
nounces His  close  relationship  with  the  eternal,  feels 
mysterious  flutterings  of  a  divine  life  within  Him, 
and  soars  toward  the  cloud  regions  of  transcen- 
dental idealism.  It  is  impossible  to  expound  these 
contradictions.  Doubtless  there  is  a  narrow  neck 
and  foggy  isthmus  where  the  infinite  continent  joins 
our  human  mainland,  but  no  Argo,  no  brave  vessel 
of  discovery  and  no  Columbus  has  yet  set  foot  or 
planted  flag  upon  it.  We  must  leave  these  high 
metaphysical  matters  where  the  Bible  leaves  them. 
On  the  one  part,  Jesus  says.  My  doctrine  will  win; 
its  sound  will  go  out  into  all  the  earth;  it  will  sanctify 
souls,  as  many  as  God  wills.  Then,  turning  to  His 
disciples.  He  adds:  But  you  must  not  leave  me;  you 
must  stand  with  me  and  help  me.  It  is  a  capital 
illustration  of  the  system  of  things  amid  which  we 
live.  God  is  a  mind,  a  will,  a  person,  and  has  a  plan; 
there  is  a  splendid  destiny  in  store  for  the  earth  and 
man;  but,  owing  to  our  intellectual  limitations,  even 
this  certainty  seems  to  be  suspended  upon  conditions. 
For  it  is  a  significant  circumstance  that  while  Christ 


90  PETER'S  QUESTION 

had  boundless  faith  in  the  spread  and  victory  of  His 
gospel,  He  yet  vehemently  deprecated  the  loss  of 
His  twelve  disciples.  But  if  God  can  raise  up  children 
to  Abraham  out  of  the  stones  in  the  street,  why  be 
particular?  Why  should  those  identical  fishermen  be 
essential  to  the  settlement  of  religion  and  the  inaugura- 
tion of  the  new  era? 

The  discrepancies  which  emerge  in  the  sphere  of 
religious  inquiry  are  like  the  inequalities  of  the  globe. 
This  planet  is  a  spheroid  notwithstanding  the  high 
mountains  and  the  deep  basins,  the  Alps  and  Andes 
and  Sierras,  the  Connecticut  Valley  and  Yosemite 
Valley  and  all  the  other  valleys  and  wrinkles  in  its 
crust.  By  parity  of  reasoning,  when  men  object  that 
one  doctrine  or  precept  in  religion  cancels  another, 
this  is  not  necessarily  more  true  than  in  the  physical 
constitution  of  things.  We  stand  too  low  down — 
yet  awhile — to  behold  the  sweep  and  sphericity  of  the 
system.  In  the  view  of  God,  there  are  no  flat,  inexor- 
able contradictions,  and  not  a  shadow  of  inconsistency. 
There  is  surely  an  answer  somewhere  in  the  universe 
for  all  our  intellectual  doubts  and  perplexities. 

Turn  now  to  Simon  Peter's  solution  of  his  Master's 
painful  suspense.  The  honest,  blunt,  ingenuous  man 
spoke  out  in  his  brave,  impulsive  manner,  assuring 
Jesus  that  this  was  only  a  back  eddy  in  the  stream. 
His  language  and  tone  are  very  fine;  it  is  one  of  the 
noblest  of  his  recorded  utterances.  He  was  usually 
bold  and  manful  and  vigorous,   and  magnificently 


PETER'S  QUESTION  91 

so  upon  this  occasion.  He  saw  that  this  apostasy 
among  the  ranks  of  his  former  friends  had  smitten 
Jesus  with  a  sharp  shock  of  surprise,  and  the  consola- 
tion he  administered  in  view  of  it  is  notable.  He 
does  not  merely  bid  his  dejected  Lord  take  heart, 
does  not  simply  remind  Him  that  this  is  one  of  the 
little  casualties  that  always  beset  important  enter- 
prises, but  he  throws  his  soul  into  an  impassioned 
challenge,  flung  out  at  those  very  people  who  were 
flocking  from  the  synagogue  in  a  state  of  irritation  and 
disgust:  ''Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go?  Thou  hast  the 
words  of  eternal  life."  This  was  really  splendid  in 
Peter:  it  was  a  genuine  inspiration.  It  was  a  word 
fit  to  live  and  has  actually  lived.  It  is  a  word  fit  to' 
lie  at  the  base  of  the  Christian  religion — for  all  time.) 
He  looked  upon  the  conduct  of  those  malcontents  as 
simply  absurd:  ''Where  are  they  going?"  he  cried. 
^'Are  they  going  back  to  the  synagogue?  What  good 
can  they  get  there?  What  help,  strength,  impulse, 
in  the  dry,  tedious  explanations  of  the  rabbis?" 

Virtually,  he  puts  the  question.  What  will  you  sub- 
stitute for  the  gospel  of  the  Son  of  God?  This  is  the 
pith  of  it,  and  it  is  a  standing  challenge  to  all  comers 
and  to  all  centuries.  It  is  not  hard  to  destroy,  to 
pluck  up,  to  pull  down,  to  undermine  by  ridicule,  by 
satire,  and  by  skeptical  objections.  But  when  the 
house  is  down  and  dismantled,  what  next?  What 
and  how  shall  we  build?  We  want  a  shelter,  a  roof 
overhead,  a  doctrine,  a  hope,  a  promise,  a  prospect, 


92  PETER'S  QUESTION 

in  view  of  the  dark  future  that  confronts  us.  Men 
obliterate  creeds,  cast  miracle  and  prophecy  out  of 
the  world,  and  declare  that  the  young,  lusty  Samson 
of  modern  thought  will  not  be  bound  by  the  tattered 
traditions  of  antiquity  in  an  age  of  scientific  experi- 
ment. They  talk  about  intellectual  emancipation; 
the  abolition  of  intellectual  servitude  to  a  set  of  ideas 
that  originated  with  an  insignificant  Semitic  tribe 
who  once  lived  in  a  corner  of  the  earth:  but  whither 
does  this  new  exodus  tend?  I  would  know  where  I 
shall  land  before  I  embark.  It  is  easy  to  carp  and 
criticise,  to  deal  in  shadowy  negations;  men  may  dem- 
onstrate the  absurdity  of  prayer,  the  impossibility 
of  miracle,  the  antecedent  unlikelihood  of  the  Incarna- 
tion; they  may  call  the  Resurrection  of  Christ  a  myth; 
they  may  account  for  Isaiah,  Ezekiel  and  the  Apoc- 
alypse and  all  moral  inspiration  upon  natural 
principles:  but  meantime  all  this  does  not  feed  men. 
We  need  something  positive,  some  great  spiritual 
affirmation,  a  ray  of  hope,  a  word  of  promise,  as  we 
stand  huddled,  frightened,  shivering  on  this  sand  bank 
of  finite  existence.  And  where  shall  we  get  these, 
outside  of  the  Christian  revelation?  ''Lord,  to  whom 
shall  we  go?     Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life." 

Simon  Peter  did  not  guess  it,  but  he  put  an 
argument  of  incomparable  force  into  the  mouth  of 
Christian  apology  in  every  age.  If  you  do  not  want 
the  gospel,  what  will  you  have?  Some  one  may  say: 
"Let    us    have    nothing.     Whither    shall    we    turn? 


PETER'S  QUESTION  93 

Why,  let  us  go  no  whither;  let  us  be  content  with  our 
ignorance;  let  us  behave  decently,  prudently,  civilly, 
and  let  metaphysics  and  supernaturalism  alone." 
But  this  is  hardly  possible.  The  religious  question 
will  obtrude  itself.  There  are  struggling  hopes  and 
unutterable  groanings,  curiosities  and  conjectures, 
dim  presentiments,  serious  moods,  secret,  silent  his- 
tories of  the  human  heart.  Men  come  to  times  v/hen 
they  instinctively  call  out  for  light  to  see  by  and  for 
peace  of  mind.  Religious  ideas  are  the  highest  we 
can  apprehend;  no  one  is  completely  human  who  has 
not  got  them  and  does  not  sometimes  revolve  them 
in  thought.  All  secular  interests  finally  abut  on  them; 
all  other  questions  ultimately  empty  into  the  question 
of  religion  as  rivers  into  the  sea.  The  whole  life  of 
man  on  earth  is  escorted  and  over-canopied  by  religion ; 
it  emerges  constantly  in  some  shape;  occasionally  it 
lifts  its  tongue  of  iron  and  thunder  and  subdues  the 
soul  and  makes  men  feel  that  all  else  is  empty  and 
vapid.  Evermore  it  pushes  to  the  front  and  becomes 
vivid  and  imperative  by  some  awakening  event  or 
personal  experience.  You  will  not  be  able  to  get 
out  of  the  way  of  religion  altogether.  It  will  pass  near 
you,  it  will  fling  its  shadow  across  your  path,  you 
will  some  time  hear  its  step  close  behind  you,  you  will 
become  aware  of  its  august  presence.  It  may  be  a 
sorrow  or  a  joy,  a  light  or  a  darkness,  a  trivial  or  a 
significant  occurrence,  but  by  some  means  the  great 
question  of  religion  will  confront  you.     If  you  have 


94  PETER'S  QUESTION 

got  a  soul  fit  to  be  saved,  an  infinite  potentiality,  any- 
thing fine,  deep,  earnest,  oracular,  it  cannot  but  be 
that,  now  and  then,  you  will  ask  of  yourself, 
'^Whence  do  I  come?"  ^'Whither  do  I  go?"  ''What 
may  I  hope  for?"  '^  Where  shall  I  find  authority  and 
satisfaction?"  ''Where  can  I  build  and  rest  secure?" 
And  these  are  essentially  religious  questions.  More- 
over, there  is  no  answer  for  them  at  all  comparable 
to  those  facts  and  finalities  that  make  up  the  Chris- 
tian gospel. 

The  word  of  Simon  Peter  still  stands  true.  The 
race  has  traveled  onward  nineteen  hundred  years 
and  picked  up  divers  informations,  but  has  not  yet 
discovered  a  substitute  for  the  Galilean  gospel.  It 
has  a  peculiar  property.  It  is  steeped  in  mystery 
and  is  full  of  wonder,  but  it  is  the  best  solution  of  the 
universe,  and  of  man's  life  as  part  of  it,  that  has  ap- 
peared. There  are  features  of  it  which  raise  incred- 
ulity, bring  on  suspense  of  judgment,  offend  pride; 
there  are  ideas  and  elements  in  Christianity  which, 
if  pushed  to  their  limit,  might  land  one  in  fatalism  or 
drive  him  into  fanaticism  and  superstition.  But 
probably  no  system  of  religious  thought  can  be  offered 
to  the  human  mind  which  is  not  susceptible  of  per- 
version and  a  false  development.  The  subject  matter 
is  of  such  high,  transcendent,  indefinable  quality,  as 
not  to  lend  itself  to  adequate  expression  and  easy 
accommodation  to  the  human  understanding.  If 
you  insist  upon  making  an  intellectual   system  or 


PETER'S  QUESTION  95 

a  philosophy  out  of  it,  there  will  be  disappointment, 
for  there  is  much  it  does  not  explain.  But  take  it 
simply  as  the  fragment  of  a  mighty  voice  from  Heaven, 
God's  wish  for  man,  a  poor  child  of  sin  and  sorrow,  a 
belated  traveler  through  nature  to  eternity,  a  hireling 
accomplishing  his  day,  a  prisoner  without  an  advo- 
cate, an  orphan  without  a  friend,  a  mariner  launching 
on  tumbling,  treacherous  deeps  without  a  poles  tar; 
take  the  gospel  as  God's  way  of  saving  men,  by 
giving  them  Christ  for  their  faith,  imitation,  obedience, 
love;  His  spirit  the  law  of  their  life.  His  cross  the 
symbol  of  their  sin  and  shame,  His  Resurrection  the 
pledge  of  their  immortality,  and  where  will  you  match 
this  thought?     "To  whom  shall  we  go?" 


THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB 

Afid  they  said  unto  Moses,  Speak  thou  to  us,  and  we  will  hear: 
but  let  not  God  speak  with  us,  lest  we  die. — Exodus  20  :  19. 

A  LARMING  phenomena  accompanying  the  giv- 
ZJk  ing  of  the  Law— more  particularly  the  Deca- 
-i-  J^  logue — were  the  immediate  occasion  of  this 
outcry.  The  book  of  Deuteronomy  refers  again  to  the 
panic  of  the  people  who  witnessed  the  blazing  splendors 
and  terrors  of  the  scene  and  who  deprecated  loudly 
a  repetition  of  them.  They  were  ignorant,  squalid 
and  superstitious,  had  just  escaped  out  of  Egypt,  and 
were  ill-prepared  for  such  a  demonstration  as  that  which 
opened  the  new  career  to  which  divine  Providence 
called  them.  By  lurid  signs  and  portents,  by  the 
vibrations  of  the  earthquake,  chaotic  darkness, 
rolling  thunders,  columns  of  smoke  and  sheets  of 
flame,  Jehovah  apprized  them  of  his  presence.  The 
theocratic  idea  was  the  core  of  the  Hebrew  religion, 
i.  e.,  that  Jehovah  was  their  king  who  had  brought 
them  out  of  the  Pharaohnic  bondage  in  Egypt  and 
would  conduct  their  national  migration  to  new  lands 
and  send  them  prosperity,  upon  condition  that  they 
hearken  to  His  voice  and  worship  Him  alone.  This 
was  primary  and  fundamental;   infidelity  to  the  God 

96 


THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB  97 

of  Sinai  was  the  one  unpardonable  sin,  they  must  put 
away  all  other  gods  and  all  images  of  them  and  cleave 
loyally  to  Jehovah  and  He  would  care  for  them.  Here 
evidently  was  a  new  doctrine,  a  new  revelation,  a  new 
era,  opening  upon  these  people  and  through  them 
upon  the  world.  The  scope  and  significance  of  it  can 
only  be  properly  appraised  by  these  modern  centuries 
that  have  seen  Judaism  culminating  in  Christianity,  the 
religion  of  the  Incarnation.  And  even  we,  doubtless, 
do  not  see  all  that  was  involved  in  the  Hebrew  Exodus. 
It  will  probably  exfoliate  still  further  and  unfold  more 
meanings  than  the  modern  world  yet  dreams  of.  The 
Hebrews  had  arrived  in  the  peninsula  of  Sinai  before 
the  purpose  of  the  movement  was  definitely  disclosed 
to  them;  it  was  there  that  this  electrical,  heart-shaking 
display  took  place,  and  they  were  set  apart  and 
isolated  as  a  peculiar  people — a  holy  nation. 

The  Red  Sea  is  another  name  for  the  Arabian  Gulf, 
which  sets  into  the  land  from  the  Indian  Ocean  and 
separates  between  Arabia  and  Africa.  At  its  northern 
extremity  this  sea  divides  into  two  arms  or  branches, 
between  which  lies  the  wild,  rugged  region  of  Sinai. 
Two  lofty  summits,  the  one  Horeb,  the  other  Sinai, 
tower  up  out  of  the  mountainous  group  or  ridge  that 
runs  through  that  section,  and  of  these,  Horeb  is  be- 
lieved to  have  been  the  theater  of  divine  manifestation 
to  the  Hebrews.  It  was  convulsed,  as  the  record 
states,  by  physical  commotions  so  frightful  that  the 
poor,  timid  people  prayed  Moses  to  intercede  for 
7 


98  THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB 

them:  "Speak  thou  to  us,  and  we  will  hear:  but  let 
not  God  speak  with  us,  lest  we  die." 

Fear,  under  which  they  were  suffering,  is  an  emo- 
tion fundamental  to  man  and  of  which  everyone  be- 
comes aware  in  the  course  of  life.  It  runs  through 
a  progressive  scale  of  degrees,  from  the  anxiety  and 
care  that  come  upon  everyone  from  day  to  day  and 
the  suppressed  consciousness  that  something  dis- 
tressing and  disastrous  may  happen  at  any  time, 
clear  up  and  along  to  its  extreme  manifestation  in 
fright  and  ungovernable  alarm.  It  is  a  bank  of  many 
keys;  it  is  a  susceptibility  or  emotion  that  may  be 
aroused  by  various  causes;  by  ignorance  and  sus- 
picion, as  well  as  by  some  imminent  peril,  formidable 
shape  or  situation. 

The  Hebrews,  congregated  around  Horeb,  were 
both  ignorant  and  superstitious,  and  consequently 
in  a  condition  highly  favorable  to  the  access  of  fear. 
The  prodigious  forces  of  nature,  the  raven-wing  of 
the  storm,  physical  portents,  are  always  alarming 
even  to  civilized  man ;  much  more  to  those  on  a  lower 
level  who  do  not  know  their  origin  and  character  or 
how  to  interpret  them.  By  such,  they  are  regarded 
as  the  threat  of  an  angry  god,  ready  to  break  out  upon 
them  and  consume  them,  unless  placated.  There  is  a 
large  deposit  of  superstitious  feeling  in  human  nature, 
to  which  omens,  auguries,  striking  coincidences, 
dreams,  fortuitous  events  of  various  kinds,  make  a 
powerful  appeal.     Even  the  enlightened  and  cultured 


THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB  99 

cannot  always  and  altogether  cast  off  the  spell  and 
rid  themselves  of  these  strong  presentiments;  though 
the  progress  of  science  has  done  a  great  deal  to  scatter 
ghostly  forces  and  astrological  superstitions  and  fig- 
ments and  falsities  that  have  benumbed  and  paralyzed 
the  human  mind.  Many  fears  have  fled  before  the 
waxing  light  of  investigation  and  research,  as  blinking 
owls  and  night  birds  retire  before  the  rising  sun. 
Man  is,  and  ever  will  be,  under  earthly  conditions,  a 
timid  animal  and  easily  frightened;  nevertheless,  he 
has  already  laid  many  specters  that  in  other  ages 
loomed  big  and  black,  destroyed  his  happiness  and 
broke  in  upon  his  peace.  One  great  outstanding  fear, 
of  course,  survives — the  fear  of  death.  This  is  or- 
ganic and  constitutional,  stronger  in  some  than  in 
others,  but  probably  strong  in  all  who  are  sound  and 
sane,  because  in  an  eminent  degree  it  is  associated  with 
mystery,  darkness  and  the  unknown.  Did  man  know 
as  much  about  it  and  its  sequel — the  great  beyond — as 
he  does  about  the  nature  realm,  it  probably  would 
not  disturb  him  any  more  than  do  the  portents  which 
affrighted  antiquity.  But  as  our  case  stands,  the 
human  family  will  have  enough  to  be  afraid  of,  to 
pray  to  be  delivered  from,  for  an  indefinite  time  to 
come.  Only  as  the  God  of  Peace  draws  nearer  to 
our  race,  and  sheds  more  of  His  light  and  love  upon 
the  world,  will  the  dispensation  of  fear  pass  by  into 
the  twilight  and  be  replaced  by  greater  trust,  confi- 
dence and  composure,  until  at  length,  when  Paul's 


loo  THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB 

fervid  vaticination  is  fulfilled,  and  death  ''the  last 
enemy"  is  destroyed,  fear  will  vanish  and  man  will  be 
happy  as  a  joyous  child  in  his  father's  house. 

Returning  to  the  record,  it  is  clear  that  the  Hebrews 
at  Horeb  were  frightened  to  consternation.  They 
had  seen  great  wonders — the  sore  plagues  of  Egypt, 
the  passage  of  the  Red  Sea;  their  march,  thus  far,  had 
been  marked  by  stormy  and  changeful  phenomena; 
but  nothing  so  sublime,  solemn  and  tremendous  had 
confronted  them  as  the  flame  and  smoke  and  thunder 
and  seismic  shocks  that  betokened  the  presence  of 
Jehovah.  So  they  said  to  Moses,  ''Do  thou  speak  to 
us,  for  we  are  afraid  of  God."  And  in  this  cry  the 
Hebrews  gave  voice  to  a  human  instinct.  They  stood 
for  mankind  at  large  in  their  terror  at  the  super- 
natural and  their  clear  preference  for  the  ordinary 
routine  and  humdrum  of  daily  life.  They  knew  Moses; 
he  was  no  stranger,  but  a  man  of  like  passions  with 
themselves;  they  could  understand  him;  he  spoke 
their  vernacular,  he  had  all  the  attributes  of  their  own 
humanity  and  was  perfectly  intelligible  and  acceptable ; 
but  the  blaze  of  Deity,  the  coruscating  portents  that 
played  around  the  summit  of  Horeb,  the  equipage 
of  the  Almighty  rolling  heavily  through  the  firma- 
ment, the  clouds  and  darkness,  these  were  unwelcome 
signals, — showed  that  they  stood  too  close  for  their 
comfort  and  composure  to  the  mystical  realm  of  the 
unseen  and  unknown.  They  much  preferred  empirical 
facts  to  supernatural  signs.     "Speak  thou  to  us,  .  .  . 


THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB  loi 

but  let  not  God  speak  with  us,  lest  we  die."  It  was  a 
highly  human  cry;  w^e  feel  our  brotherhood  with  those 
frightened,  fugitive  Hebrews,  on  their  road  to  Canaan. 
Mystery  throws  a  dark  shadow  over  the  soul ;  human 
nature  shrinks  from  it  instinctively  as  from  something 
unfamiHar  and  uncongenial.  Man  has  a  sense  of  the 
supernatural,  by  which  token  he  is  distinguished  from 
all  the  sub-kingdoms  of  sentient  life.  He  believed  in 
earlier  ages  that  the  river,  the  field,  the  forest,  the 
home  and  hearth  each  had  its  presiding  god;  he  some- 
how got  at  the  conception  of  spirit,  apart  from  sen- 
sible matter,  and  of  an  unseen  realm  outside  of  nature, 
which  needed  to  be  taken  account  of,  and  prudentially 
arranged  for.  The  origin  of  this  behef  is  among  the 
insolubilities,  unless  we  hold  that  it  is  the  inspiration 
of  the  Almighty,  one  of  the  signs  of  man's  exceptional, 
miraculous  nature, — that  he  has  within  him  a  principle 
of  eternity  that  may  outlive  the  ephemeral,  evanescent 
things  of  time.  It  is  not  easy  to  explain,  as  philos- 
ophers and  anthropologists  have  suggested,  how  it  has 
come  to  pass  that  entire  races  of  men,  living  on  a  low 
intellectual  and  moral  level,  have  reached  the  idea  of 
a  supernatural  system,  transcending  this  material 
sphere.  It  would  seem  that  the  outside  pressure  is  too 
great;  that  the  universe  is  so  vast,  mystical  and  solemn 
that  even  degraded  tribes  have  been  obliged  to 
posit  some  such  conviction  in  order  to  satisfy  their 
feeling  and  account  for  what  exists.  But,  whatever 
may  have  been  the  origin  of  this  presentiment,  it  is 


I02  THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB 

well-nigh  universal,  and,  more  than  that,  it  becomes 
big,  emotional,  oppressive,  and  strikes  gloom  and  fear 
into  the  heart  of  man  upon  emphatic  occasions  and 
when  it  becomes  a  vivid  realization.  The  fact  is  that 
man  does  not  desire  to  have  the  mechanical  routine  of 
life  broken  in  upon  by  any  strange,  unaccountable 
interruption;  least  of  all  by  a  discovery  of  God  and 
unseen  reals  to  him,  in  unwonted  shapes.  ''We  will 
talk  with  you,"  said  the  Hebrews  to  Moses,  "but  we 
do  not  want  to  hear  the  voice  of  God."  They  spoke  a 
word  we  can  all  understand.  So  true  is  this  that, 
without  question,  most  men  would  be  willing  to  live 
on  upon  the  earth  forever,  or  indefinitely,  carrying 
their  aches,  pains,  limitations,  liabilities  of  all  sorts, 
were  that  possible,  rather  than  try  the  unknown,  the 
undiscovered,  the  infinite  beyond.  There  is  a  great 
deal  of  grumbling  and  fault-finding  heard  on  every 
hand;  but,  on  the  whole,  man  is  contented  to  stay 
here,  even  in  rags  and  starvation,  and  with  quite 
dim  and  slender  outlooks.  He  is  intensely  tenacious 
and  conservative;  dislikes  and  fears  change — unless 
it  is  demonstrably  for  the  better;  would  rather  bear 
the  evils  he  has  and  knows  than  make  experiments, 
and  clings  to  his  mother  earth,  whose  form  and  features 
he  loves.  Dull,  yellow,  commonplace  as  our  days  are, 
we  would  rather  have  them  proceed  along  that  monot- 
onous level  than  have  them  startled  and  convulsed 
and  thrown  into  confusion  by  a  bolt  out  of  the  blue; 
by    some    sudden    emergency,    formidable    front   of 


THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB  103 

dilemma,  or  difficulty  which  compels  us  to  retreat, 
or  to  reform  our  forces,  or  to  dispose  of  ourselves 
differently  from  what  we  had  anticipated  and  counted 
upon. 

''Speak  thou  with  us,  and  we  will  hear;   but  let 
not  God  speak   to  us,"  cried   the  Hebrews.      How 
human!     Translated  into  our  own  feehng  and  ex- 
perience it  means  that  we  can  manage  to  carry  the 
common  burdens  and  cares  that  fall  to  us,  and  meet 
the  things  that  come  along  from  day  to  day,  by  way 
of  natural  consequence;   but  that  we  do  not  wish  to 
have  the  even  tenor  of  our  Hves  broken  in  upon  and 
upheaved   and   unsettled   by   revolutionary   events, 
notably  such  as  bring  to  the  surface  the  underlying 
mystery  which  is  at  the  base  of  things.     The  majority 
of  men  are  averse  to  the  somber,  solemn  aspects  of 
life,   and  tremble  before  its  dark    and   tremendous 
experiences.     These,  since  they  seem  to  have  more  of 
God  in  them  than  the  common  contents  and  ongoings 
of  daily  existence,  are  less  intelHgible,  and  so  offend 
and  affright  us.     There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  world 
at  large  is  shy  of  any  fact  or  occurrence  that  raises  the 
rehgious  question  and  rumbles  with  eternity.     Men 
and  women  ordinarily  do  not  care  to  dwell  upon  the 
serious  side  of  things,  to  ponder  the  old  gray  questions 
of  God,  duty,  immortahty,  hoHness.     These  transcen- 
dental topics  break  into  our  careless,  laughing,  roUick- 
ing  lives  like  a  harsh  discord.     There  be  many  who 
never  go  below  the  surface  or  reflect  upon  great  cate- 


I04  THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB 

gories,  or  entertain  any  thoughts  save  such  as  connect 
with  these  mundane  surroundings.  The  deeper  mean- 
ings of  hfe,  its  profound  seriousness,  its  basic  reahties, 
its  mystery,  the  ''divine  dark"  that  overspreads  it, 
the  infinite  horizons  into  which  it  rolls  away,  the 
hints,  omens,  intimations,  flashes  as  from  a  higher 
firmament— all  such  salutary  suggestions  and  lessons, 
with  which  our  earthly  existence  is  rife, — seem  quite 
lost  upon  many:  they  prophesy  unheeded.  Men  of 
affairs,  immersed  in  the  business  of  this  world,  are 
often  too  much  preoccupied  to  think  about  the  great 
question  of  religion;  it  sounds  to  them  unpractical, 
unprofitable,  unreal.  The  lovers  of  pleasure,  in  the 
swirl  and  hot  breath  of  great  cities,  have  already  found 
their  career,  and  look  upon  anything  that  brings  God 
nigh  to  them  as  an  interruption,  an  impertinence. 

Moreover,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  much  of  our  popular 
religion,  so  called,  is  conventional,  mechanical,  cere- 
monial, and  does  not  take  vital  hold  upon  God  and 
beget  a  consciousness  of  His  presence.  The  tendency 
of  the  average  man,  who  worships  at  all,  is  to  make  an 
ecclesiastical  apparatus  do  his  religion  for  him.  He 
assists  and  participates  as  a  spectator  at  a  pageant  or 
procession,  but  receives  no  impulse,  no  inspiration,  no 
new  insight,  no  spiritual  gift  or  guidance;  there  comes 
no  discovery  of  God  to  his  soul.  Is  it  not  true  that  we 
finger  the  fringes  and  phylacteries  of  rehgion?  We 
dwell  in  the  region  of  phrases  and  shadows,  and  are 
afraid  of  going  too  deep,  afraid  of  the  voice  of  God, 


THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB  105 

reproving  our  sins  and  calling  us  to  repentance  and  a 
better  obedience. 

Unquestionably  there  is  a  lack  of  vitality,  of  reality, 
in  the  religious  consciousness,  even  of  most  of  those 
who  profess  to  have  any.  How  few,  comparatively, 
live  by  metaphysical  convictions,  by  great  hopes,  by 
a  strong  faith.  We  are  embarrassed  by  these  solemn 
things.  And  when  some  one  occasionally  appears 
who  seems  possessed  by  them  in  a  larger  measure 
than  most,  he  strikes  us  as  a  curious  phenomenon, 
something  out  of  the  common  course  of  nature;  we 
call  him  saint,  mystic,  enthusiast.  But  it  is  worth 
remembering  that  life  is  only  great  and  noble  and  in- 
structive in  so  far  as  one  can  hear  God  in  it.  The 
crying  need  of  the  human  spirit  is  to  come  into  com- 
munion with  God,  the  Father  of  spirits.  That  was 
indeed  a  mighty  utteranc  of  the  Psalmist,  expressing 
at  once  the  deepest  need  and  the  infinite  potentiality 
of  our  nature,  when  he  said:  "My  soul  thirsteth  for 
God,  for  the  living  God." 

By  all  means  we  must  find  a  principle  of  eternity  in 
time,  the  supernatural  in  nature,  the  infinite  within  the 
husk  of  the  finite.  We  must  live  by  the  power  of  spirit, 
by  great  beliefs  and  great  expectations  and  great  intui- 
tions. We  must  trace  divine  tendencies  running  like 
golden  threads  through  the  world  and  hear  a  heavenly 
music  above  the  tumult  and  hurly-burly  of  life.  We 
must  see  and  hear  God  in  order  to  save  our  temporal 
experience  from  being  a  deep  of  confusion,  an  in- 


io6  THE  THUNDERS  OF  HOREB 

scrutable  enigma.  The  truth  is,  so  far  from  religion 
being  indifferent  and  immaterial,  it  is  the  incom- 
parable interest  of  time,  because  it  takes  hold  of  that 
which  lies  behind  time  and  nature  and  is  necessary 
to  explain  them.  To  walk  with  God,  to  be  apprized 
of  His  perpetual  presence,  to  see  all  things  in  Him,  to 
meet  Him  alike  on  common  days  and  holy  days — this 
is  the  only  kind  of  life  worthy  of  man,  because  it  rests 
upon  a  spiritual  basis,  it  assumes  things  not  seen  and 
eternal. 

And  so  I  conclude  that  the  prayer  of  the  ignorant 
and  frightened  Hebrews  was  not  a  wise  and  good 
prayer;  certainly  not  the  right  one  for  benighted 
pilgrims  in  a  world  of  darkness  and  mystery.  On  the 
contrary,  what  we  need  is  to  have  God  speak  to  us,  in 
omniscience,  in  the  Christian  revelation,  by  the  com- 
munications of  the  Holy  Ghost,  by  His  moral  provi- 
dence, in  any  and  every  way  whereby  it  is  possible  for 
us  to  get  an  assurance  of  His  love  and  mercy  and  gra- 
cious intentions  and  final  purposes.  '  We  need  to  get 
speech  with  Him.  We  want  to  feel  that  He  is  real, 
religion  real,  the  life  to  come  real,  the  gospel  of  the 
Incarnation  a  real  message,  a  sublime,  inspired 
prophecy, — and  God  alone  can  tell  us  these  things. 


THE  WAY 

And  desired  of  him  letters  to  Damascus  to  the  synagogues, 
that  if  he  found  any  of  this  way,  whether  they  were  men  or 
women,  he  might  bring  them  bound  unto  Jerusalem. — Acts 
9  :  2. 

FROM  this,  and  several  similar  statements  in 
the  book  of  the  Acts,  we  learn  what  was  prob- 
ably the  first  name  given  to  the  Christian  reli- 
gion— the  way.  Other  names,  such  as  Christianity, 
the  one  now  most  in  use,  or  the  gospel,  or  the  Christian 
revelation,  were  not  the  earliest  titles  prefixed  to  the 
doctrine  or  message  brought  by  Christ.  A  simpler, 
more  pictorial  and  descriptive  appellation  was  applied 
to  it,  judging  from  quite  a  number  of  passages  in  this 
treatise  called  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  which  outlines 
the  beginning  of  the  church.  The  cursory  reader 
might  easily  overlook  this,  but  attention  has  been 
'drawn  to  it  by  New  Testament  students,  and  their 
position  is  well  sustained  by  sufficient  citations.  The 
earliest  reference  to  it  occurs  in  connection  with  the 
career  of  Saul  of  Tarsus.  Not  satiated  with  the  blood 
of  Stephen,  he  proposed  to  Caiaphas  and  the  San- 
hedrin  to  furnish  him  letters  of  introduction  to  the 
synagogues  in  Damascus — the  capital  city  of  Syria, 
where  a  large  colony  of  Jews  resided — authorizing  him 

107 


io8  THE  WAY 

to  arrest  any  disciples  of  the  Man  of  Nazareth  who 
might  be  propagating  His  doctrine  in  those  parts,  or, 
as  the  record  runs,  ''if  he  found  any  of  this  way, 
whether  they  were  men  or  women,  he  might  bring  them 
bound  unto  Jerusalem."  Later,  and  subsequent  to  his 
wonderful  conversion,  when  he  was  surrounded  by  a 
brutal,  fanatical,  howling  mob  in  Jerusalem,  he  said, 
in  the  course  of  his  explanation  and  defense  to  the 
crowd,  ''I  am  a  Jew,  born  in  Tarsus,  of  Cilicia,  but 
brought  up  at  the  feet  of  Gamaliel,  and  being  zealous 
for  God,  I  persecuted  this  way  unto  the  death." 
Still  later,  when  arraigned  before  Felix,  he  remarked,  in 
reply  to  Tertullus,  the  prosecutor,  ''This  I  confess,  that 
after  the  way  which  they  call  a  heresy,  I  serve  the  God 
of  our  fathers."  Of  Felix  himself  it  is  written  that, 
^'having  more  exact  knowledge  concerning  the  way," 
he  deferred  the  case  until  Lysias,  the  chief  captain, 
should  come  to  give  his  narrative;  the  presumption 
being  that  Felix,  although  a  pagan  Roman,  living  at 
Caesarea  where  Cornelius  the  centurion  had  been  con- 
verted to  the  truth,  and  where  Philip  the  Evangelist 
resided,  may  thus  have  become  acquainted  with  the 
Christian  way.  Again,  we  read  that  the  preaching  of 
Paul,  at  Ephesus,  instigated  a  certain  Demetrius,  who 
made  silver  shrines  for  the  goddess  Diana, — and  there- 
by drove  a  lucrative  trade, — to  incite  a  riot;  and  so, 
the  statement  is  made,  "about  that  time  there  arose 
no  small  stir  concerning  the  way."  And  in  the  syna- 
gogue of  that  great  city  of  Ephesus,  it  is  written  that 


THE  WAY  109 

Paul  ''reasoned  and  persuaded  and  preached"  for 
several  months;  but  that  when  ''some  were  hardened 
and  spoke  evil  of  the  way  before  the  multitude,  he 
departed  and  taught  in  the  school  of  one  Tyrannus." 

Other  passages  might  be  cited  in  which  this  word 
*'the  way"  appears  as  the  name  by  which  the  new  re- 
ligious phenomenon,  the  gospel  that  sprang  up  in  Gali- 
lee, was  popularly  known.  It  was  the  way  of  the  Naza- 
renes,  the  way  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth :  this,  in  all  likeli- 
hood, was,  so  to  speak,  its  baptismal  name,  the  first 
wliich  it  bore.  As  disciples  were  called  Christians  first 
in  Antioch,  so  the  opinion,  the  doctrine,  the  faith  they 
professed  was,  at  its  inception  and  start,  called  the 
way.  And  while  more  elaborate  and  ambitious  names 
have  been  invented  and  applied  to  it,  perhaps  it  is 
questionable  whether  one  more  apt,  appropriate,  terse, 
significant,  and  true  to  fact  has  ever  been  broached. 

It  is  conceivable  that  this  original  name  was  sug- 
gested by  that  great  declaration  of  Jesus  concerning 
Himself,  "I  am  the  way,  the  truth  and  the  life:  no 
man  cometh  unto  the  Father,  but  by  me."  Cer- 
tainly this  same  image  of  a  way  is  employed  by  Him 
to  express  His  relationship  to  mankind,  and  the  of- 
fice He  had  come  to  discharge.  He  calls  Himself  the 
way  of  access  to  God.  It  may  possibly  have  been  a 
reminiscence  of  this  fact  which  led  the  first  disciples 
to  speak  of  the  person,  authority  and  services  of  Jesus 
Christ  as  "the  way  of  life" — "the  way  of  salvation." 
In  any  case  we  can  see  that  the  name  was  happily 


no  THE  WAY 

chosen;  it  is  graphic  and  realistic,  it  brings  a  picture 
before  the  eye. 

Everyone  knows  what  a  way  is  and  how  indispens- 
able it  is,  whether  the  word  be  used  in  a  natural  sense 
or  metaphorically ;  whether  one  is  speaking  of  the  way 
home,  or  the  way  to  reach  London  or  Calcutta,  or  the 
way  to  an  intellectual  conclusion,  or  the  way  to  dem- 
onstrate a  theorem  in  Euclid,  or  the  way  to  conduct 
business  upon  sound  economic  principles  and  accumu- 
late wealth.  In  whatever  context  the  word  be  used,  it 
has  one  general  meaning,  applicable  to  any  subject  mat- 
ter whatever;  it  always  connotes  a  destination,  an  ob- 
jective point,  a  goal,  a  concrete  accomplishment  and  a 
certain  best  method  or  direction  to  take,  in  order  to 
reach  it.  The  picture  is  that  of  a  pilgrim  or  pedestrian 
on  the  road  towards  an  end,  more  or  less  distant,  which 
can  only  be  overtaken  and  attained  by  keeping  to  the 
track  and  following  the  way  that  leads  to  it.  And,  ob- 
viously, simple  and  homely  and  familiar  though  it  be,  no 
word  so  descriptive  and  accurate  could  be  spoken  of 
that  which  in  more  formal  phrase  we  call  Christianity, 
or  the  gospel  of  the  Incarnation,  than  this,  that  it  is  the 
way  of  life,  the  way  to  God  and  blessedness.  In  the  last 
analysis,  this  is  what  the  great  Christian  fact  essen- 
tially is,  stripped  of  theological  and  technical  entangle- 
ments, and  subtle,  wire-drawn  distinctions,  and  scho- 
lastic definitions.  The  revelation  that  came  through 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  the  way  God  has  appointed  by 
which  man  may  find  Him  and  enter  into  His  life. 


THE  WAY 


III 


It  is  different  from  other  ways  that  have  been  sur- 
veyed, so  to  speak,  and  laid  down  and  recommended, 
and  that  have  been  historically  traveled  throughout 
all  the  human  centuries. 

The  desire  to  be  happy,  to  attain  to  blessedness,  to 
fulfill  our  nature  and  to  become  as  rounded  and  com- 
plete and  harmonious  as  is  possible,  seems  to  have  the 
force  of  an  instinct.  Mankind,  for  the  most  part,  so 
far  as  we  know,  has  never  contemplated  extinction,  the 
loss  of  personality,  with  equanimity  and  as  a  desidera- 
tum. Man  wants  more  life,  not  less;  a  larger,  richer, 
more  powerful,  more  secure  existence,  and  not  a  di- 
minished and  depauperated  one.  He  would  increase, 
not  decrease,  and  this  innate,  universal  longing  has 
blossomed  into  cults,  creeds,  ways,  by  means  of  which 
it  has  expressed  itself  and  has  thought  to  realize  its 
hope.  A  great  portent,  a  most  significant  clause,  is 
this  of  man's  constitution,  that  he  wishes  to  go  higher, 
to  go  ahead,  to  augment  his  being,  to  know  more, 
enjoy  more,  accomplish  more.  The  deep  thinkers, 
the  founders  of  religions  and  of  philosophies  and 
ethical  systems,  those  who  have  brooded  over  this 
mystery  of  being  and  who  have  tried  to  expound  it, 
have  proposed  different  ways  for  the  satisfaction  of 
their  human  curiosity  and  human  aspiration. 

Truly  it  is  a  great  sight  this :  man  standing  before 
the  sphinx  of  existence,  trying  to  solve  the  eternal 
riddle,  to  find  his  way  out  of  confusion,  contra- 
diction and  uncertainty,  to  assurance  and  serenity 


112  THE  WAY 

and  peace.  And  in  this  age-long,  ever-during  en- 
deavor he  has  cast  up  and  defined  several  ways  of 
coming  at  a  provisional  settlement  of  his  speculative 
and  moral  difficulties.  These  are  the  great  religions 
of  the  world,  the  systems  excogitated  by  men  of  specu- 
lative power  and  religious  imagination,  who  could  not 
contentedly  wake  and  sleep  surrounded  by  a  universe 
of  such  mystical  obscurity  as  this,  without  making  an 
honest  attempt  to  read  some  intelligible  meaning  into 
its  huge  cloudy  symbols,  and  eternal  processes,  as  well 
as  into  the  baffling,  inexpHcable  chances  and  changes  of 
human  life.  These  guesses,  conjectures,  hypotheses, 
prescriptions,  have  been  simply  ways  of  finding  God 
and  getting  relief  from  the  stress  and  strain  of  the 
universal,  of  this  whole  environment,  that  lowers 
around  us,  and  bristles  with  doubt,  fear,  suspense, 
hope,  and  is  so  problematical.  This,  fundamentally, 
has  been  the  end  of  all  religions,  of  all  philosophies  of 
the  universe  and  of  life — to  discover  the  true  way  to 
the  first  cause  of  things,  the  anonymous,  inexorable 
energy  that  rules  and  controls  the  all,  and  to  come  into 
right  relations  with  that.  So,  you  see,  that  although 
men  disguise  the  truth  by  big,  swelHng  words,  tech- 
nical terms  of  high  complexity,  ponderous  theology 
and  metaphysical  speculation,  reduced  to  its  lowest 
terms  all  man's  transcendental  theorizing  and  all  the 
dust  of  systems  and  creeds  that  bestrews  the  track 
of  the  race,  have  been  and  are  merely  the  search 
of  the  human  mind  in  its  serious  moments,  by  its 


THE  WAY  113 

prophetic  souls,  for  the  way  that  leads  to  inward 
peace,  to  a  sense  of  the  unseen  and  divine,  to  a  spiritual 
interpretation  of  man  and  his  world. 

By  a  fine  insight  the  Christians  of  the  apostolic  age 
called  faith  in  Christ  the  way.  It  was  a  golden  word, 
realistically  true,  for  that  is  exactly  what  it  purports  to 
be — the  way  to  a  higher  life  in  unison  with  God,  the  way 
to  the  highest  good  for  mankind.  Now,  if  this  be  so,  it 
is  worth  while  to  consider  its  peculiarity,  its  differentia, 
its  characteristic  note,  for  Christ  came  in  the  full- 
ness of  the  time  and  at  the  end  of  long  ages.  Many 
oracular,  inspired  men  had  preceded  Him,  many  ex- 
periments had  been  made  to  get  at  the  heart  of  things, 
to  enucleate  the  kernel  of  truth  from  its  shell  and  husks 
and  arrive  at  finality.  There  had  been  analytic 
thinkers,  silent,  meditative  mystics,  glorious  dreamers, 
moral  censors  and  preachers,  and  there  was  a  large 
deposit  of  truth  in  what  they  taught.  The  candle  of 
the  Lord  at  least  flickered  within  them.  That  is  to 
say,  there  was  an  element  of  moral  truth  in  certain  of 
their  insights  and  conclusions,  and  by  this  saving 
clause  they  have  survived.  Truth  alone  lives,  and 
every  falsehood  or  figment  that  gets  wide  vogue  owes 
its  longevity  to  the  amount  of  truth  and  reality  it 
contains. 

I  need  not  describe  at  length  the  various  ways  by 
which  the  rehgious  consciousness  has  approached  the 
eternal  problems.  We  recall  the  many  forms  in  which 
it  struggled  to  express  itself  in  the  old  civilizations  that 


114  THE  WAY 

centered  around  the  Mediterranean,  till  it  finally  came 
to  flower  in  elect  souls  that  thought  out  those  great 
systems  of  philosophy  that  helped  to  prepare  men's 
minds  for  the  Christian  ideal.  The  Stoics,  for  ex- 
ample, approached  the  religious  question  through  the 
theory  that  the  universe  is  always  what  it  ought  to  be, 
is  always  right,  reasonable  and  ethical,  and  the  part 
of  man  is  to  adjust  himself  to  it;  happiness  does  not 
consist  in  having  things,  but  in  controlling  one's  de- 
sires, in  finding  one's  life  within  and  not  without. 
The  Stoic  had  unbounded  faith  in  the  will  of  the 
universe  revealed  in  events,  in  what  actually  happens. 
Outward  goods,  he  held,  are  comparatively  indiffer- 
ent; there  is  nothing  good  but  the  good  will ;  that  is,  a 
will  conformed  and  agreeable  to  nature  and  to  fact, 
to  what  is  appointed  and  inevitable.  It  was  a  doc- 
trine of  apathy,  of  subjectivity  and  retirement  within 
one's  self.  It  suppressed  the  emotional  nature  and 
trained  the  will  to  stand  erect  and  unterrified  whatever 
might  happen.  Stoicism  was  the  religion  of  the 
educated  classes  in  the  old  Mediterranean  world  long 
after  faith  in  the  poetical  mythology  of  Greece  had 
perished.  It  had  something  good  in  it;  it  was  ethical. 
It  exalted  virtue,  reason,  fortitude,  courage,  the  idea 
of  duty.  It  was  one  of  the  ways  by  which  man  sought 
spiritual  satisfaction.  It  finally  approached  the  stand- 
point of  Israel,  and  men  like  Epictetus  and  Seneca 
spoke  of  the  divine  personality  exactly  as  a  Hebrew 
theist  would,  and  in  similar  language. 


THE  WAY  115 

Passing  into  the  East,  we  meet  with  Buddha's  way. 
He  was  profoundly  impressed  by  the  pain  and  misery 
of  existence,  and  the  root  of  it,  he  taught,  is  human 
passion  and  desire.  Kill  desire  and  you  kill  distress; 
the  cure  of  all  the  evil  under  the  sun  is  the  extinction 
of  personal  being,  a  daily  self-discipline  and  dying  unto 
natural  feelings  and  appetencies,  until,  at  last,  self- 
consciousness  is  lost  in  the  absolute,  as  a  flake  of  snow 
melts  in  the  sea.  He  taught,  in  order  to  this  consum- 
mation, some  high  ethics — such  virtues  as  patience, 
temperance,  chastity,  almsgiving  and  universal  be- 
nevolence to  man  and  beast. 

In  the  East  and  in  the  West,  before  the  advent  of 
Christianity,  were  monks  and  eremites,  who,  crowded 
by  the  pressure  of  life,  sick  of  its  hardness,  greed, 
violence,  vexation,  its  wars  and  fighting,  its  barbar- 
ism and  brutality,  betook  themselves  to  solitude  and 
silence  and  ascetic  austerity,  if  perchance  they  might 
in  that  way  get  a  vision  of  the  infinite  and  find  rest 
for  their  souls.  Verily,  the  ways  have  been  many 
along  which  men  oppressed  by  the  burden  of  the 
world's  problem,  and  of  human  destiny,  have  tried 
to  get  out  into  light  and  freedom,  and  ascertain  what 
is  the  ultimate  reality  and  ground  of  things.  The 
vice  that  cleaves  to  most  of  the  ways  by  which  man 
has  sought  to  solve  the  great  mystery  is,  that  he 
has  not  separated  sharply  between  God  and  nature; 
he  has  confounded  the  two.  He  has  personified 
the   great   forces    and    phenomena   of   nature.      He 


ii6  THE  WAY 

has  worshiped  the  sun,  the  moon;  he  has  consulted 
the  stars  and  the  flight  of  birds;  he  has  worshiped 
the  earth  and  its  prodigal  fecundity,  the  Nile,  the 
Ganges.  He  has  put  a  god  over  the  harvest,  over 
famine,  disease,  life,  death;  over  every  object  and 
event.  Nature  has  been  too  strong  for  him,  and  he 
has  become  a  polytheist  or  else  a  pantheist,  identi- 
fying God  with  the  totahty  of  things;  making  God 
the  world-soul  that  comes  to  personal  consciousness  in 
man,  saying  that  every  man  is  God  in  some  power  or 
degree.  Impersonal  being  has  evolved  him,  he  is  its 
product  and  transitory  expression;  consequently  sin, 
accountability,  personal  immortality,  a  supernatural 
revelation,  are  all  impossible.  Everything  is  neces- 
sitated as  by  an  iron  fate.  It  is  indeed  a  great  and 
impressive  spectacle,  this  search  of  the  human  mind 
in  all  generations  after  the  way  to  arrive  at  the  vision 
of  absolute  truth,  of  ideal  beauty  and  supreme  per- 
fection, and  to  solve  the  autonomies  and  contradictions 
that  beset  thought  upon  the  highest  themes. 

Now,  the  grand  assumption  of  the  Christian  gospel 
is  that  it  is  the  only  way  by  which  man  can  come  at 
peace  and  satisfaction  touching  these  final  questions 
that  began  early  to  vex  and  importune  human  thought. 
This  is  the  splendid  audacity  of  Christianity,  that  it  is 
the  way  of  life,  compared  to  which  there  is  no  other. 
No  one  can  read  the  reported  words  of  Christ  and  fail 
to  receive  this  impression,  that  He  regarded  Himself  as 
an  authentic  messenger  from  God,  whose  work  here  was 


THE  WAY  117 

a  finality,  and  dispensed  forever  with  all  other  mediators 
and  their  messages.  Whether  He  had  ever  heard  of 
Plato,  of  the  Stoics,  of  Buddha,  of  Zoroaster  or  Con- 
fucius, whether  He  was  acquainted  with  the  mass  of 
pre-Christian  and  pagan  speculation,  is  highly  doubt- 
ful, but  He  speaks  as  one  whose  consciousness  of  God 
and  of  having  been  authorized  by  Him,  is  so  profound, 
indelible  and  inexpugnable,  that  it  does  not  matter  who 
preceded  Him,  how  brilliant  their  genius  or  mighty 
their  voice.  The  sublime  egotism  of  Jesus  Christ  is  a 
characteristic  which  has  not  escaped  universal  notice. 
His  self-assertion.  His  positiveness,  His  lonely  grandeur 
standing  up  singly  before  the  world  and  all  its  cen- 
turies as  the  Son,  who  knew  His  Father's  mind  and 
had  come  to  declare  it,  is  one  of  the  prime  arguments 
for  Christianity.  Nothing  like  it  has  ever  been  seen  or 
heard  in  the  world.  The  great  teachers  of  mankind 
have  been  rather  tentative,  cautious,  inquiring.  They 
have  speculated,  reasoned,  argued  inductively  from 
their  data;  they  have  not  been  so  categorical,  so 
daring  and  dogmatic  as  Jesus.  They  have  confined 
themselves  to  recommendations,  recipes,  rules,  rituals, 
precepts,  by  compliance  with  which  men  might  re- 
ceive more  light  and  put  themselves  in  a  more  hopeful 
condition;  whereas  Jesus  said :  "Follow  me" — "lam 
the  way  " — "  Take  my  yoke  " — "  Come  after  me,  bear- 
ing the  cross" — "Learn  of  me,  for  I  am  meek  and 
lowly."  It  was  a  new  idea.  The  sages,  the  world's 
wise  men,  its  prophets  and  great  souls,  had  not  re- 


ii8  THE  WAY 

quired  men  to  imitate  them,  to  believe  in  them,  but 
rather  to  do  certain  things,  to  practice  abstinences,  to 
keep  commandments,  to  be  patterns  of  this  or  that 
virtue.  To  the  contrary  of  this,  Jesus  seemed  to 
teach  that  there  was  an  inherent  force,  residing  in  Him- 
self, capable  of  lifting  men  to  His  point  of  view,  and 
to  His  sense  of  sonship  to  God. 

People  often  talk  of  Christianity  as  one  of  the  world's 
great  religions,  probably  the  finest  product  of  the  relig- 
ious imagination  thus  far.  But  this  is  not  the  stand- 
point or  conception  of  its  Founder.  He  paid  scant  at- 
tention to  any  other  supposed  rehgious  revelation  save 
that  which  came  by  Moses,  and  this  He  modified  by 
discarding  its  ceremonial  parts  as  peripheral  and  sub- 
ordinate, and  insisting  upon  its  ethical  content.  Mean- 
time He  offered  Himself  to  the  faith  and  loyalty  of 
men  as  a  self-revelation  of  the  Father.  It  is  a  unique 
peculiarity  of  Christ's  method  that  He  calls  upon  the 
world  not  to  do  things,  not  to  go  through  a  prescribed 
round  of  exercises  and  thus  acquire  a  ritual  or  eccles- 
iastical righteousness,  but  rather  to  rise  to  His  eleva- 
tion, to  share  His  spirit,  and  to  nourish  a  secret  life  of 
communion  with  God.  This,  presumably,  is  what  He 
meant  by  faith.  You  are  said  to  have  confidence  in  a 
person  when  you  take  him  for  what  he  claims  to  be.  He 
offers  himself,  let  us  say,  in  such  or  such  a  capacity 
or  character, — as  teacher,  physician,  counselor  in  dif- 
ficulty, friend  in  adversity,  mediator  in  some  matter, — 
and  you  believe  in  him.    What  does  that  mean?    It 


THE  WAY  119 

means  that  you  trust  yourself  unreservedly  to  his 
friendship,  veracity,  judgment,  ability,  wisdom,  knowl- 
edge of  men  and  affairs.  You  bear  your  whole  moral 
weight  upon  him,  assured  that  he  will  do  the  best 
possible  for  you.  This  is  what  faith  stands  for  be- 
tween man  and  man,  and  in  the  secular  concerns  of 
life.  It  does  not  mean  other  or  differently  in  the  great 
matter  of  religion  and  in  the  soul's  relation  to  Christ. 
It  is  the  cordial  acceptance  of  Christ  in  the  character 
in  which  He  oft'ers  Himself.  It  is  a  posture  of  mind,  it 
is  an  act  of  the  will,  it  is  a  moral  attitude  that  we  take 
up  every  day  of  the  world. 

Of  recent  years  a  cry  has  arisen  in  Christendom: 
Back  to  Christ!  There  is  much  in  it.  After  all, 
and  in  the  last  resolution  of  the  matter,  religious 
faith  contemplates  a  person,  not  any  particular  doc- 
trine or  system  of  doctrines.  Of  course,  doctrine  is 
indispensable  and  necessary.  You  cannot  beheve  in 
your  friend  or  servant  without  some  doctrine  about 
him.  People  who  inveigh  against  doctrines  talk 
undavisedly.  Doctrine,  of  some  sort,  is  necessarily 
implicated  with  all  our  thinking  and  actions;  it 
is  flooring  and  foundation  and  substructure,  and 
quietly  underlies  and  undergirds  all  our  life  and  its 
activities,  as  the  rocky  ribs  of  the  planet  clamp  it 
together.  And  yet,  practically,  it  is  doubtless  true 
that  one  does  not  need  to  define  God  accurately  and 
completely  in  order  to  believe  in  Him.  Jesus  did  not 
define  God;  He  knew  Him  by  a  rapid,  luminous,  fervid 


I20  THE  WAY 

intuition;  He  lived  in  God  as  in  a  surrounding  atmos- 
phere; He  said,  ''the  pure  in  heart  shall  see  God"; 
He  did  not  require  the  various  arguments  for  theism 
expounded  from  professorial  chairs — the  ontological, 
cosmological,  teleological  arguments — because  for  Him 
God  was  an  immediate  presence,  and  did  not  need  to 
be  approached  and  apprehended  as  much  by  the  in- 
tellect as  by  the  heart,  the  conscience,  the  affections. 
And  the  same  is  true  in  reference  to  Jesus  Christ  Him- 
self as  man's  everlasting  hope.  It  is  certainly  im- 
portant to  define  His  place,  His  person.  His  dignity,  so 
far  as  possible.  The  Councils  of  Nice  and  Chalcedon 
were  not  officious  and  unnecessary,  or  their  conciliar 
decisions  of  no  value  and  importance.  Yet  one  may 
believe  in  Christ  as  the  way  to  the  Father  who  never 
heard  of  them,  because  faith  is,  ultimately  and  in  its 
best  sense,  a  moral  attitude  toward  a  person,  not  to- 
ward a  doctrine,  definition  or  theory.  It  is  the  soul 
precipitating  itself  upon  Christ,  out  of  a  sense  of  des- 
titution and  poverty,  ignorance  and  disability.  It 
takes  Him  as  He  offers  Himself  when  He  declares,  ''No 
man  cometh  unto  the  Father  but  by  me";  "I  am  the 
way";  "I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life";  "He 
that  believe th  on  me  shall  never  die."  It  is  a  cry  of 
the  soul  out  of  its  darkness  and  doubt:  "Lord,  I  be- 
lieve; help  thou  my  unbelief." 


THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA 

The  impotent  man  answered  him,  Sir  I  have  no  man,  when 
the  water  is  troubled,  to  put  me  into  the  pool:  but  while  I  am 
coming,  another  steppeth  down  before  me. — John  5:7. 

NEAR  Jerusalem  was  a  curative  pool  of  water, 
famous  and  frequented  in  New  Testament 
times.  "Bethesda,"  or  House  of  Mercy,  it 
was  called;  and  around  it,  sheltered  in  stalls  and 
porches,  gathered  the  palsied,  paralytic  and  forlorn 
to  avail  themselves  of  its  remedial  property.  Gen- 
erally the  pool  lay  placid  and  calm,  but  there  were 
strange  intervals  of  commotion,  when  the  waters  were 
stirred.  A  vagrant  rumor  obtained  that  an  angel 
periodically  brooded  over  it,  skimmed  its  surface  with 
his  glistening  wings  and  vanished;  after  which  mi- 
raculous visitation  whosoever  first  stepped  in  was 
likely  to  be  cured.  This  alleged  descent  of  the  angel 
upon  his  benevolent  mission  does  not  occur  in  some  of 
the  ancient  and  authoritative  manuscripts  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  the  probability  is  that  his  interven- 
tion was  a  report  current  among  the  Palestinian  Jews 
of  that  day.  No  one,  probably,  would  have  been 
willing  to  aver  that  he  had  actually  seen  this  phenome- 
non.    The   likely   supposition   is    that    the    famous 

spring  was  charged  with  chemical  properties  or  com- 

121 


122  THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA 

binations,  and  that  under  appropriate  conditions  they 
were  excited  to  unusual  activity  and  became  super- 
heated and  effervescent,  which  was  a  token  that  the 
supreme  moment  of  efficacy  had  arrived. 

Whatever  the  fact,  the  truth  abides  that  a  merciful 
Creator  has  here  spread  a  scene  abounding  in  benevo- 
lent provision  for  man.  Marks  of  intelligent  prepara- 
tion are  everywhere  perceptible,  calculated  to  put  him 
upon  thinking  of  the  wisdom  and  goodness  and  power 
that  fashioned  his  dweUing  place.  So  that  while  we 
may  agree  that  the  Bethesda  phenomenon  does  not  im- 
peratively call  for  an  angel,  it  does  not  follow  that  this 
opinion  expels  supernaturalism  from  the  Bible  or  from 
the  world.  If  man  be  a  spiritual  being  capable  of 
understanding  spiritual  truths,  we  do  not  know  in 
what  strange  fashions  God  may  have  revealed  Him- 
self to  such  a  creature,  especially  in  the  elder  ages 
before  there  was  temple,  priest  or  prophecy,  and  before 
the  rise  of  institutional  religion  or  ritual. 

The  Hebrew  Bible  makes  mention  of  theophanies, 
visible  shapes  and  audible  voices,  by  means  of 
which  selected  individuals  were  apprized  of  the 
divine  presence.  What  exactly  happened  upon  such 
rare,  emphatic  occasions  may  be  matter  of  sur- 
mise and  conjecture,  but,  in  some  way,  God  the 
infmite  Spirit  can  surely  find  a  point  of  contact  with 
the  finite  spirit  of  man  and  teach  him  through  his 
imagination,  through  his  sense  of  wonder,  of  awe, 
of  reverence,  of  mystery.     If  there  be  a  living  God 


THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA  123 

and  if  man  be  cast  in  His  image,  there  is  no  antecedent 
impossibility  of  commerce  between  them.  The  bibli- 
cal miracles  in  both  Testaments  assume  an  infinite 
element  in  man  and  a  capacity  in  him  for  intercourse 
with  God:  they  are  big  with  meaning,  and  are  hints 
and  preludes  of  a  grand  development  in  store  for 
human  nature.  Nevertheless  biblical  interpreters 
have  properly  availed  themselves  of  the  law  of  par- 
simony; they  would  not  make  miracle  cheap  nor 
usher  it  upon  the  stage  in  a  case  where  it  is  not  called 
for,  for  the  chief  end  of  miracle  is  not  to  create  a 
commotion,  to  set  up  a  spectacle,  and  gather  a  crowd 
of  groundlings  to  stare  and  gape  at  it.  Miracle  is  no 
quick  fire  of  straw,  roaring  and  crackling  for  idle  boys 
to  shout  over.  It  is  of  the  nature  of  testimony ;  it 
is  a  witness  connected  with  some  spiritual  law  or 
principle,  and  designed  to  support  it.  It  is  the  broad 
seal  of  Almighty  God,  set  upon  some  eternal  truth. 
It  is  a  John  the  Baptist  crying,  "The  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  at  hand."  As  the  mariner  hangs  out  a 
thermometer  to  test  the  atmosphere  or  detect  the 
proximity  of  an  iceberg,  so  miracle  notifies  of  an 
impending  fact  or  order  out  of  sight. 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  by  multiplying  the  miraculous 
element  superfluously,  wastefully,  one  runs  the  risk  of 
belittling  the  essential,  native  grandeur  of  the  thing. 
Because  where  there  is  no  eternal  verity  at  stake,  no 
great  moral  law  needing  emphasis,  no  new  revelation  of 
divine  purpose,  no  fresh  era  or  economy  of  divine 


124  THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA 

administration  about  to  dawn, — in  such  case  miracle 
would  look  like  pyrotechnics.  Man's  higher  spiritual 
nature  is  the  main  interest;  to  fashion,  ripen,  train 
that,  is  the  end  of  all  the  ages  and  their  different 
gospels.  The  education  of  the  human  soul,  the 
progress  of  mankind,  the  growth  of  heavenly  principles 
in  man's  dark  underworld,  the  proclamation  of  a 
higher  law,  the  turning  of  a  new  leaf  in  universal 
history — such  events  may  well  be  escorted  by  thun- 
ders and  portents,  and  signalized  by  an  overflow 
of  Almighty  Power  Look  at  miracle  upon  that  side, 
and  it  is  perfectly  possible,  if  not  probable.  All 
depends  upon  one's  theory  concerning  the  earth  and 
man;  whether  it  be  a  moral  system,  a  divine  thought, 
or  merely  an  accident  thrown  up  by  caprice  and  the 
rude  horseplay  of  blind,  impersonal  force.  Does  the 
world  mean  anything  deep  and  serious?  Has  man 
latent  possibilities?  Is  time  the  theater  whereon  he 
may  unfold  and  train  them  for  higher  flights?  If 
so,  then  we  are  not  in  position  to  say  that  God  may  not 
teach  and  encourage  him,  should  occasion  arise,  by 
what  in  our  ignorance  we  call  miracle. 

Moreover,  this  consideration  tends  to  explain  why 
doubt  and  suspense  of  judgment,  at  least,  have  settled 
upon  this  account  of  the  angel  at  the  Bethesda  pool. 
It  is  not  a  fact  that  illustrates  any  great  moral  truth 
or  vindicates  any  high  claim  or  opens  any  new 
horizon  of  hope  for  mankind;  it  merely  relates  to 
the  cure  of  bodily  ailments. 


THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA  125 

True,  one  may  reply  that  the  mighty  works  of  Christ 
were  largely  concerned  with  the  same  phenomenon; 
but  this  would  be  a  low  and  inadequate  view  to 
take  of  them,  to  confine  them  exclusively  to 
their  physical  aspects  and  efTects.  It  would  be  a 
total  misconception  of  the  errand  of  Christ  to  say 
that  He  came  into  this  disjointed  world  for  no  other 
purpose  than  to  ease  pain,  and  to  touch  lepers  and  lame 
folk  and  blind  eyes.  People  sometimes  speak  as  if 
the  function  of  Jesus  Christ  were  exhausted  by  this 
humanitarian  work  of  His.  Whereas  this  was  only 
incidental,  the  concomitant  of  a  larger  fact.  Christ's 
miracles  remind  one  of  the  passage  of  the  earth  in  its 
orbit,  through  a  shower  of  meteors  or  fragments  from 
another  orb — they  speak  of  firmaments  beyond  human 
ken;  their  moral  design,  their  didactic,  prophetic 
character  is  their  main  ingredient.  Reduce  them  to 
an  exhibition  of  philanthropic  feeling  and  you  cut 
away  the  spiritual  sense,  which  is  their  best  meaning. 
The  Son  of  man,  and  Son  of  God,  touched  only  man's 
sensitive  physical  nature,  as  one  runs  one's  fingers  over 
a  keyboard  or  strikes  the  strings  of  a  harp,  not  for  the 
sake  of  the  thing  itself,  but  to  draw  from  the  deeps 
of  the  instrument  an  intelligible  meaning,  a  sweet 
melody. 

The  special  circumstance  of  this  case  was  that  of  a 
diseased,  stranded  sinner,  lying  forlorn  and  discon- 
solate in  one  of  the  porches  surrounding  the  pool. 
There  for  the  space  of  thirty-eight  years,  according 


126  THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA 

to  his  pathetic  narrative,  he  had  been  hovering  hope- 
less, being  so  poor  that  he  could  hire  no  man  to  carry 
him  to  the  spring  at  the  ripe  moment,  and  so  decrepit 
that  he  could  never  reach  the  spot  in  time.  Often  he 
had  hobbled  and  lunged  along  with  might  and  main, 
thinking  he  might  make  it;  but  at  the  last  critical 
moment  some  one  else  always  managed  to  get  ahead 
and  snatch  the  benefit.  So  he  had  settled  down 
into  a  chronic  despair  when  the  great  Prophet  of 
Nazareth  happened  to  pass  along  and  inquire  if  he 
would  be  cured. 

Now,  this  cripple  and  his  doleful  tale  set  forth 
an  apt  picture  of  human  condition  in  more  as- 
pects than  one.  For  observe  that  he  is  waiting 
for  something  to  turn  up  to  his  advantage  and  the 
decided  betterment  of  his  estate,  but,  for  some  reason, 
he  is  constantly  put  off;  the  good  time  does  not  come, 
the  hope  is  deferred.  This  is  an  old  story,  as  old  as 
the  race;  with  photographic  accuracy  it  hits  off  uni- 
versal human  nature.  Man  awakes  here  on  earth  and 
finds  himself  full  of  appetites,  ambitions,  cravings  of 
all  kinds;  he  wants  a  great  deal  more  than  he  can  get; 
he  reaches  out  in  all  directions;  he  will  pluck  the 
fruit  from  the  tree,  the  berry  from  the  bush;  the 
fish  that  swim  the  sea,  the  birds  that  fly  the  air, 
he  looks  upon  as  his  prey;  he  seeks  the  gold  and 
iron  hidden  in  the  hills,  the  silks,  gems,  furs  and 
plumage  of  every  clime ;  he  would  levy  on  all  things  of 
beauty  and  value  and  utilize  them  to  satisfy  his  de- 


THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA  127 

sire;  meantime  he  is  never  quite  satisfied,  cannot 
get  enough,  is  lured  farther  afield  in  search  of  treas- 
ure. Before  the  gaze  of  the  individual  seeker, 
and  of  the  race  at  large,  has  ever  hung  the  flicker- 
ing image  of  something  vast,  splendid,  superior 
to  any  present  realization.  Man  in  all  his  gen- 
erations has  been  saved  by  hope.  There  is  a  fire 
in  his  bones,  a  fever  in  his  blood,  speculation  in 
his  eye,  a  hunger  in  his  heart  that  unsettles  and 
disquiets  and  pushes  him  out  into  fresh  fields,  looking 
for  new  conquests.  Like  the  impotent  folk  at 
Bethesda,  he  is  waiting  for  some  strong  angel  bearing 
the  proclamation  of  a  new  and  better  era.  The  Edens, 
Utopias,  golden  fleeces,  golden  apples  and  enchanted 
islands,  the  Pactolian  tide  of  Midas,  old  pagan  fables 
as  well  as  the  millennium  of  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
all  testify  to  this  ineradicable  hope,  this  yearning  in 
man  for  something  better,  richer,  more  complete  and 
harmonious  than  has  yet  been  reached  and  realized. 
So  I  call  this  scene  at  Bethesda  a  striking  hkeness  of 
generic  humanity;  those  ricketty,  wheezing,  dilapi- 
dated, broken  creatures  waiting  for  the  angel.  What 
an  apt  picture  it  is  of  our  struggling,  scrambHng  race, 
peering  into  the  darkness,  watching  for  every  windfall, 
clutching  at  any  straw  or  sign  that  promises  good, 
or  better  than  it  has!  Well  considered,  it  is  really  a 
prophetic  trait,  a  hallmark  of  greatness,  a  regal  atti- 
tude, that  the  human  spirit  has  always  been  waiting, 
hoping,  expecting,  on  the  outlook  for  enlargement, 


128  THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA 

and  franchise  and  better  conditions.  Oh,  yes;  those 
cripples  at  the  pool  watching  for  the  descent  of  the 
angel  are  a  perfect  parable  of  mankind.  This  is  the 
ready  explanation  of  the  wars  of  conquest  and  coloni- 
zation, of  the  migration  of  nations,  commercial  ri- 
valry, and  expansion  of  trade.  This  explains  the  altar 
of  Mammon,  and  its  crowd  of  worshipers,  and  the 
frantic  struggle  of  both  nations  and  individuals  to 
get  the  market,  the  monopoly,  the  mastery. 

Moreover,  this  cry,  this  clamor,  is  significant,  for 
it  is  an  intimation  of  immortality  and  of  the  infinite 
nature  of  man.  It  is  his  blind,  blundering  way 
of  expressing  his  profound,  internal  disquiet  and 
dissatisfaction  in  view  of  extant  arrangements,  and 
his  belief  that  something  better  may  be  effected. 
Above  all  beneath  him,  man  is  the  creature  who 
waits;  he  has  ever  stood  in  an  attitude  of  expectancy; 
his  literature,  in  all  tongues  and  times,  ever  since  he 
began  to  think  and  to  record  his  thoughts,  has  been 
loaded  with  complaint  of  what  is,  of  current  conditions, 
of  the  extant  civilization,  of  the  low  pulse  at  which  life 
beats,  of  the  corruption  and  decay  of  manners  and 
morals.  Large  tracts  of  his  splendid  literature  are 
a  Jeremiad,  deploring  the  evil  present  and  longing  for 
an  age  of  Arcadian  simplicity  and  for  golden  years  to 
bless  mankind.  It  is  an  argument  of  high  import. 
Base  and  criminal  as  have  been  the  ways  by  which  the 
world  in  every  century  has  sought  to  right  itself,  to 
procure  better  terms  and  accommodations  and  to 


THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA  129 

move  into  a  celestial  country,  the  impulse,  the  instinct 
itself,  is  doubtless  sound,  a  divine  implantation,  and 
grounds  upon  firm  fact.  For  the  soul  of  man  is 
essentially  progressive,  and  holds  limitless  possibilities, 
and  all  that  art,  culture,  education,  money  have  yet 
effected  through  the  ages  and  dispensations  of  hu- 
man history  have  not  cured  this  sacred  hunger  for 
more  light,  more  power  and  higher  perfection. 

Then  too  the  cry  of  this  cripple  suggests  another  re- 
flection. In  order  to  explain  his  poor  success  in  taking 
advantage  of  the  curative  properties  of  the  wonderful 
pool,  he  tells  Jesus  that  upon  every  occasion  he  was 
forestalled  and  hindered  by  some  other  companion 
in  misery  who  forged  ahead  and  got  the  benefit: 
''While  I  am  coming,  another  steppeth  down  before 
me";  in  other  phrase,  he  missed  his  opportunity. 
Opportunity,  as  everyone  knows,  is  defined  as  a  fit 
or  favorable  time  for  the  execution  of  a  purpose;  it 
usually  depends  upon  a  conspiracy  or  confluence  of 
circumstances,  and  if  any  one  circumstance  be  absent 
the  opportunity  is  not  ripe.  Thus,  the  time  may  be 
propitious,  but  the  place  inconvenient;  or,  conversely, 
the  place  may  be  favorable  to  the  carrying  out  of  one's 
design,  but  the  time  most  inopportune.  In  order  to 
constitute  a  complete  or  capital  opportunity  all  the 
circumstances  or  elements  should  conspire  to  point 
it  out.  The  danger  is  that  we  may  force  it,  to  our 
own  mortification  and  failure;  thinking  that  because 
an  occasion  has  offered,  the  ripe  time  has  come  for 
9 


130  THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA 

fulfillment.  Hence  comes  much  of  the  blundering, 
bungling  and  botchwork  of  our  lives;  running  before 
we  are  sent,  overleaping  the  mark  and  falling  on  the 
other  side ;  with  much  else  that  is  awkward  and  crude. 

Truly  a  great  study  it  is,  this  of  opportunity.  To  do 
the  right  thing  at  the  wrong  time  may  turn  out  to  be 
even  worse  than  not  to  attempt  it  at  all.  Perception, 
judgment,  wisdom,  which  are  the  fine  adaptation  of 
means  to  ends,  these  qualities  are  indispensable  to  the 
safe  conduct  of  life;  the  lack  of  them  has  wrecked 
many  a  person  of  unimpeachable  motives  and  good 
intentions.  Opportunity,  Hke  the  atmosphere,  like 
the  elastic  ether  that  fills  infinite  space  and  transmits 
impulses  throughout  the  universe,  is  a  universal 
bounty,  from  which,  probably,  no  one  is  absolutely 
excluded.  Everyone  has  a  day,  a  chance,  an  opening 
into  a  larger  liberty.  Not  many  such  critical  epochs, 
it  may  be,  befall  the  same  individual;  but  at  each 
door  a  few  knock  and  make  their  overtures.  As  those 
who  wander  through  a  dim,  dense  forest,  once  in  a 
while  catch  sight  of  a  trail  or  a  clearing,  or  see  light 
beyond,  so  likewise  to  us  pilgrims  of  time,  come 
moments  when  a  new  hope  is  born,  and  an  upward 
path  is  blazed  and  demarked  for  our  feet. 

Indeed,  life  is  full  of  chances  of  all  kinds,  so  that 
no  one  who  has  the  instinct  to  apprehend  and  the 
heart  to  improve,  need  grovel  and  stagnate.  Life 
itself,  properly  considered,  is  one  splendid,  opulent 
opportunity  to  make  the  most  of  one's  self,  to  realize 


THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA  131 

one's  possibilities,  to  augment  the  volume  of  one's 
being,  to  train  the  spirit  and  enlarge  its  capacities. 
There  is  always  more  to  be  had  by  those  who  want  it; 
the  world  is  built  upon  this  plan;  it  is  stocked  with  a 
wealth  of  facts,  of  knowledge  and  of  values,  and  only 
awaits  exploration. 

We  sometimes  imagine,  and  querulously  complain, 
that  all  the  chances  are  gone,  that  we  were  born  too 
late,  that  everything  within  sight  has  been  preempted 
or  bespoken,  that  all  the  ore  veins  have  been  worked 
and  the  pockets  and  gulches  of  gold  discovered  and 
on  the  way  to  exhaustion,  and  that  very  little  of  worth 
or  significance  is  left  to  tempt  or  to  reward  our  pains ; 
but  this  is  a  mistake.  There  is  always  something 
to  study  and  to  learn;  new  questions  to  discuss,  fresh 
issues  to  settle;  unexpected  complications, — political, 
social,  religious, — constantly  emerge;  epoch-making 
books  now  and  again  issue  forth  from  a  cunning 
brain. 

Oh,  yes;  the  world  is  eternally  young;  it  is  not 
bankrupt  or  worn  out.  God  doubtless  has  secrets 
to  divulge  which  are  not  ripe  yet  a  while;  new  and 
marvelous  discoveries  will  break  forth  out  of  His 
word  and  providence,  hidden  from  even  the  wise 
and  prudent  of  elder  ages ;  no  generation  of  men,  until 
the  mystery  of  time  be  finished,  but  will  have  some- 
thing to  learn,  to  acquire,  to  enjoy;  something  fit  to 
excite  curiosity,  wonder,  gratitude  and  praise. 

But  the  personal  equation  may  be  at  fault;  the  indi- 


132  THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA 

vidual  himself  may  be  handicapped  and  hindered  and 
fail  of  attainment.  This  was  the  case  of  the  cripple 
at  Bethesda:  ''While  I  am  coming,"  he  complained, 
"another  steppe th  down  before  me" — he  could  not 
avail  himself  of  his  chance.  And,  generally  speaking, 
the  hindrances  men  meet  in  actualizing  their  desires 
and  ambitions  are  past  computation.  These  may 
arise  from  untoward  outward  circumstances  or  from  a 
native  inability,  but  whatever  their  origin  and  seat,  as 
matter  of  fact  a  countless  multitude  fall  short,  and 
their  chariot  wheels  never  graze  the  goal.  Indeed,  this 
makes  a  large  part  of  the  pathos  of  life — our  failures 
to  see  and  to  estimate  opportunity,  and  to  turn  it 
to  the  best  account.  Who  is  so  wise,  so  sagacious 
and  alert,  so  provident,  as  not  to  err  here? 

By  consequence,  it  becomes  a  serious  matter  and  of 
high  practical  import  for  us  to  consider  what  we  are 
making  out  of  our  life  history,  and  whether  we  are  actu- 
alizing its  possibiHties.  Because  it  abounds  in  oppor- 
tunity for  the  enlargement  of  the  spirit,  for  its  enfran- 
chisement and  education  and  growth.  Yea,  verily,  there 
is  no  investigation  which,  if  honestly  pursued,  promises 
richer  fruit  than  this.  What  is  it  that  hinders  me, 
gets  the  start  of  me,  heads  me  off,  so  that  I  cannot 
reach  the  real  goals  of  life,  cannot  make  much  of  sub- 
stantive value  out  of  it,  or  fulfill  the  best  tendencies  of 
my  nature?  Here  is  a  brief,  breathing,  conscious  spell 
of  existence,  wherein  a  mortal  man  may  look  abroad 
upon  the  infinite  splendor  of  the  universe  and  hear  the 


THE  POOL  OF  BETHESDA  133 

deep  boom  of  eternity  in  his  ear  and  get  an  inkling  of 
human  capacity  and  destiny ;  here  are  noble  literatures, 
high  examples,  great  traditions,  fine  heroisms,  reli- 
gious truths,  solemn  presentiments;  here  are  Hebrew 
prophecy  and  the  Christian  gospel ;  here  are  wayside 
opportunities  of  doing  good;  here  are  splendid  chances 
for  self-development  and  of  becoming  conscious  of  a 
soul  fit  for  the  realm  of  angel  and  Deity.  What 
hinders  us  from  realizing  these  celestial  visions? 
What  is  it  that  steps  down  before  us?  A  critical  in- 
quiry this  I  Why  is  it  that  more  of  humankind  do  not 
come  to  higher  planes  of  consciousness,  of  activity,  of 
achievement,  of  faith,  of  character?  Something  must 
prevent  them;  some  tyrannical  habit,  some  strong 
passion,  some  fatal  inertia.  Each  must  find  out  for 
himself  what  it  is. 

Know,  0  man,  the  day  of  your  visitation!  You 
have  intellect,  time,  strength,  some  one  talent  or 
power;  you  have  a  reasonable  soul,  a  spiritual  self. 
Let  nothing  obscure  or  hinder  you ;  let  nothing  make 
your  life  a  disappointment  and  a  failure;  let  nothing 
while  you  are  coming,  step  down  before  you. 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE 
ALMIGHTY 

//  ye  then,  being  evil,  know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto  your 
children:  how  imich  more  shall  your  heavenly  Father  give 
the  Holy  Spirit  to  them  that  ask  him? — Luke  ii  :  13. 

A  LL  the  reported  sayings  of  Christ,  His  entire 
/  \  teaching,  are  characterized  by  modernity,  or 
X  JL  adaptability  to  human  thought  and  need  in 
every  age ;  and  of  all  His  utterances,  not  many  possess 
this  quality  in  a  higher  degree  than  the  text,  appar- 
ently suggested  by  the  request  of  the  disciples  to 
furnish  some  directions  in  respect  to  the  important 
practice  of  prayer.  As  usual.  He  resorts  to  illustra- 
tions, in  order  to  show  the  success  which  attends  upon 
asking.  Thus,  He  narrates  the  experience  of  a  man 
who  wanted  three  loaves  at  midnight,  and  notwith- 
standing the  unseasonableness  of  the  hour  succeeded 
in  borrowing  them.  He  also  inquires  whether,  in 
their  judgment,  a  sane  man  would  give  his  son  a 
stone  instead  of  bread  or  a  serpent  for  a  fish. 

By  these  homely  similitudes  the  great  Teacher  lays 
a  foundation  for  the  practice  of  prayer  to  God,  implying 
that  it  will  not  be  fruitless.  He  takes  a  conspicuous 
trait  of  our  common  humanity  and  thence  infers  a 

134 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY  135 

truth  transcendently  higher  and  more  valuable.  The 
argument  is  from  the  less  to  the  greater;  it  is  an 
implied  judgment  and  not  an  example  of  reasoning 
proper,  where  two  judgments  or  propositions  are  com- 
pared by  means  of  a  third,  and  a  conclusion  deduced. 
The  text  is  an  inference  rather  than  a  demonstration. 
This  was  quite  a  favorite  method  with  Christ, — to  take 
a  generally  admitted  premise  and  shut  His  hearers  up 
to  a  necessary  conclusion  resulting  from  it.  Analyze 
the  present  statement  and  it  comes  to  this:  human 
nature  is  confessedly  selfish,  yet  men  are  not  so 
exclusively  devoted  to  themselves  and  to  their  own 
interests  as  not  to  provide  for  their  offspring.  Now, 
if  they  being  self-centered  and  self-regarding  do  this, 
shall  a  supremely  benevolent  Being  fall  short,  and  fail 
to  supply  the  deepest  needs  of  those  who  seek  His 
interference  on  their  behalf?  It  is  evidently  the  argu- 
ment a  fortiori,  from  the  weak  to  the  strong. 

Consider  this  analogy  which  Christ  sets  up,  between 
human  instincts  and  affections  and  the  disposition  of 
God.  He  reasons  from  the  one  to  the  other;  He  takes 
the  human  heart  in  some  of  its  large  general  tendencies 
as  an  image  of  the  divine,  of  the  heart  of  God,  and  so 
humanizes  our  conception  of  Him.  The  world  of  that 
age,  the  Mediterranean  nations,  had  long  pictured  the 
supreme  powers  of  the  universe  by  rude  human 
analogies  and  types,  and  the  Hebrew  prophet  Isaiah 
furnishes  a  striking  description  of  the  way  the  idolaters 
of  his  time  went  about  to  fabricate  their  deities.    Ever 


136  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY 

since  the  human  mind  undertook  to  represent  and 
embody  its  conceptions  of  the  invisible  and  eternal, 
man  has  had  recourse  to  natural  things  and  earthly 
images,  more  or  less  inadequate,  often  ridiculous  and 
revolting.  He  has  not  always  been  able  to  picture 
to  himself  the  supernatural  without  defying  proba- 
bility and  insulting  common  sense.  He  has  erred  by 
excess;  he  has  been  too  minute,  too  circumstantial; 
he  has  pushed  the  comparison  too  far  and  has  con- 
ceived of  God  and  the  unseen  realm  as  patterned 
after  the  contents  of  present  experience  and  current 
events.  Observe,  however,  that  Christ,  in  this  re- 
ported interview  with  His  disciples,  authorizes  in  part 
this  familiar  method :  only  it  is  to  be  carefully  noted 
that  His  gospel  is  peculiar  in  this  respect,  that  it  is 
restrained,  temperate,  cautious  in  its  representations, 
deals  in  generalities,  thinks  in  large  units,  moves 
along  broad  leading  lines,  does  not  refine  and  over- 
speculate. 

Here  it  is  that  even  Christian  thinkers  of  high  mental 
power  and  deep  insight  have  sometimes  been  a  trifle 
too  exact,  systematic  and  thorough.  They  have 
made  a  wholesale  transfer  of  the  elements  and  laws 
of  the  present  order  of  things  to  the  unseen  and 
ineffable,  without  knowing  that  these  would  lit.  But 
all  that  Jesus  says  on  this  dark  subject  is  rational, 
consistent  and  devoid  of  technicality  and  minute 
definition.  Thus,  in  the  case  under  consideration, 
He  uses  a  fundamental  human  instinct  as  a  hint  of 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY  137 

what  exists  in  God  and  of  what  He  may  be  expected 
to  do.  There  is  no  extravagance,  no  improbability, 
nothing  undignified  or  derogatory  to  the  Deity  in  the 
representations  which  He  makes  of  Him.  In  fact,  He 
employs  the  only  method  available  by  us  in  construct- 
ing a  clear,  coherent,  tenable  conception  of  God,  by 
deriving  it  from  our  own  nature,  emotions  and  activi- 
ties. For  we  cannot  find  anything  in  the  natural  world 
that  prefigures  God  half  so  distinctly  as  our  own 
mental  constitution  and  its  processes.  The  obvious 
reason  of  this  is  that  all  upon  which  we  look  seems 
inferior  to  ourselves.  Within  the  circle  of  his  vision 
man  finds  nothing  so  great  and  honorable  as  himself, 
or  that  stands  as  high  in  the  scale  of  being.  Somehow 
he  feels  himself  more  important  than  the  sun  or  moon, 
the  earth,  the  cataract,  or  the  mountain,  and  while 
all  nature  is  a  symbol  or  mirror  of  the  great  Creator, 
and  contains  some  trace  of  Him,  still  man  finds  in 
himself,  being  a  rational  will,  the  supreme  argument 
for  God,  and  in  his  own  equipment  the  most  suitable 
materials  out  of  which  to  construct  a  picture  of  the 
Perfect  Mind.  So  that  we  are  authorized  to  believe 
that  imtil  a  higher  revelation  dawns  our  race  will  not 
acquire  a  more  definite  or  satisfying  idea  of  the  Holy 
One  than  that  for  which  the  data  are  already  at  hand. 
In  the  order  and  sublimity  of  nature,  in  the  constitu- 
tion and  products  of  the  human  spirit,  and  chiefly 
in  the  person,  lofty  inspiration  and  supernal  ex- 
cellence of  Jesus  the  Christ,  all  of  the  eternal  God 


138  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY 

that  can  possibly  be  disclosed  to  mankind  has  been 
brought  nigh. 

Now,  observe  that  in  this  sentence  of  the  text 
Christ  singles  out  an  intensely  human  characteristic 
and  makes  it  the  hint  of  a  corresponding  attribute 
in  God.  He  takes  it  for  granted,  as  a  familiar  fact, 
that  parents  are  disposed  to  grant  the  reasonable 
requests  of  their  children  for  good  things,  and,  build- 
ing upon  this  basis,  He  proceeds  to  bring  God  within 
the  range  of  our  apprehension  by  the  affirmation  that 
He  is  equally  willing  to  bestow  upon  mankind  what  He 
considers  to  be  the  best  thing  He  has  to  give.  It  is 
clear  that,  according  to  Christ's  representation,  God, 
their  Maker,  is  generously  disposed  toward  the  chil- 
dren of  men.  He  wishes  to  help  them,  in  the  highest 
sense;  He  would  enlighten,  enlarge,  elevate,  enrich 
them.  This  statement  of  itself  is  equivalent  to  a 
revelation.  It  announces  this  splendid  truth,  that 
benevolence,  generosity,  helpfulness,  are  basal  and 
underlying  attributes  of  God.  It  is  His  nature 
to  communicate  of  His  life,  of  His  fullness  and 
exuberant  richness,  to  the  moral  creatures  He  has 
made.  He  wishes  to  impart  to  them,  so  far  as 
they  are  able  to  receive  it,  His  own  point  of  view, 
His  own  contentment  and  repose,  His  own  moral 
perfections. 

While  this  is  inferable  from  the  language  of  Christ, 
it  is  also  true,  and  we  are  constrained  to  admit,  that 
the  kindly  dispositions  of  God  toward  men  are  con- 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY  139 

ditioned  by  their  own  capacities,  by  their  power  of 
receptivity,  by  their  ability  to  appraise  and  to  accept 
His  overtures.  Of  course,  there  are  commodities  and 
conditions  that  are  supplied  to  all  indifferently.  Hav- 
ing ushered  sentient  life  upon  this  globe,  God  virtually 
pledged  His  inexhaustible  resources  for  its  support. 
But  the  natural  gifts  that  come  out  of  the  earth  are 
not  the  costliest,  most  valuable  that  the  Almighty 
has  to  bestow.  What  man,  with  his  narrow  definition, 
calls  good  is,  according  to  the  supreme  standard  of 
measurement,  the  crude  elements  and  prime  neces- 
saries of  life,  the  crumbs  from  the  table.  God,  the 
universal  Nourisher  and  Supporter  of  all  life,  scatters 
them  with  free,  bountiful  hand.  But  the  best  He 
has  to  bestow  upon  any  child  of  man  is  not  outward, 
sensible,  material,  calculable  good;  rather  is  it  an 
interior,  invisible,  spiritual  gift.  All  that  is  external 
and  imposing,  that  accosts  the  sense,  and  stirs  ambi- 
tion, and  provokes  envy,  and  quickens  the  pulse,  and 
thrusts  us  upon  exertion  to  capture  and  possess  it, 
is  only  a  shadow  of  the  higher  and  imperishable  good, 
which  is  unseen,  mystical,  divine — the  Holy  Ghost. 

Our  ordinary  estimates,  the  scales  in  which  we  weigh 
our  vision  for  reality,  are  for  the  most  part  fallacious 
and  wrong.  People  look  upon  one  who  has  been 
extraordinarily  successful  in  the  ways  and  works  of 
this  world,  and  they  say,  "  God  has  been  wonderfully 
kind  to  him."  Then  they  turn  and  look  upon  men  of 
spiritual   girth   and   stature,   who   have   understood 


I40  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY 

something  of  the  raptures  of  saints,  of  the  visions  of 
seers,  of  the  oracular  certainties  of  faith,  and  concern- 
ing these  the  secular  world  falls  suddenly  silent,  has 
nothing  to  say,  does  not  understand  them,  has  no 
calipers  to  measure  their  greatness.  Whereas  if  this 
dictum  of  Jesus  be  true,  these  latter  are  really  the 
favored  men,  the  men  who  have  got  the  best  things 
and  to  whom  God  has  broken  His  chief  secrets;  while 
those  who  are  in  full  cry  and  tumbhng  over  each 
other  after  the  food  and  the  drink,  the  cattle  and  the 
corn,  the  oil  and  the  wine,  the  thrones  of  power,  the 
bowers  of  ease,  the  pavilions  of  pleasure,  the  things 
they  call  good,  are  merely  seeking  pale  images  of  the 
unspeakable  powers  and  influences  that  come  trooping 
out  of  the  wide,  divine  kingdom  of  God.  At  any  rate, 
whatever  you  and  I  think  of  it,  this  is  unquestionably 
Christ's  doctrine.  Over  against  those  fleshly  fevers 
for  what  we  call  good,  over  against  this  immense, 
glittering,  seductive  world  of  sense,  which  feeds  our 
appetite,  captivates  our  imagination,  astonishes  our 
sight,  excites  our  cupidity,  spurs  our  efforts,  Christ 
places  a  body  of  convictions,  aspirations,  hopes,  a 
frame  of  mind,  a  peculiar  consciousness,  which  He 
names  the  Supreme  Good — the  Holy  Spirit. 

And  this  mysterious  and  mighty  influence  is  essen- 
tial to  the  higher  life  of  man  and  to  religion  in  the  soul. 
There  is  a  sublime  and  unspeakable  side  to  rehgion; 
its  superlative  attainments  are  not  the  outcome  of  our 
native  powers,  but  require  an  impulse,  an  initiative, 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY  141 

originating  in  another  sphere.  Of  course,  knowledge, 
intellectual  apprehension  of  its  doctrines,  duties  and 
expectations  is  a  material  element  in  it,  but  it  does 
not  exhaust  the  subject.  There  enter  into  it  certain 
frames  of  feeling,  a  certain  attitude  of  the  will.  It 
embodies  the  emotional  and  voluntary  nature.  There 
is  considerable  religious  knowledge;  the  creeds  of 
Christendom  are  well  known;  multitudes  apprehend 
intellectually  all  that  is  important  for  them  to  know  at 
present;  but  does  this  do  much  perceptible  good?  Do 
our  pious,  orthodox,  abstract  convictions  give  spring, 
courage,  enthusiasm?  What  is  wanted  to  make  them 
vivid,  dynamic,  controlling,  compelling?  The  truth, 
in  this  obscure  matter,  seems  to  be  that  the  soul  of 
man  needs  to  be  moved  upon,  illuminated,  energized 
from  above.  In  order  to  come  into  close  and  fruitful 
relation  with  religious  truths  and  ideals,  these  should 
be  made  to  pass  before  the  imagination  with  such 
port  and  majesty,  to  commend  themselves  to  the 
conscience  with  such  convincing  demonstration,  to 
appeal  to  the  affections  as  so  intrinsically  lovely, 
that  the  soul  shall  spontaneously  espouse  them.  But 
our  nature  cannot  develop  such  enthusiasm.  We  are 
swayed  by  other  desires  and  ambitions.  To  get  a 
sense  of  God  as  a  perpetual  presence,  as  a  mighty  in- 
spiration, as  an  abounding  joy, — for  such  high  achieve- 
ment the  natural  man  is  not  equal.  The  great  mys- 
tics, the  great  religious  natures  in  every  age  have  felt 
this  to  be  true.     They  have  agreed  with  St.  Paul  that 


142  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY 

they  were  ''wretched  men,"  and  did  not  find  it  in 
themselves  to  be  much  better;  could  not  overtake, 
nor  come  abreast  with  their  noblest  aspirations.  The 
potent,  ineffable  influence,  the  Holy  Spirit,  appears  to 
be  indispensable  in  order  that  man  may  realize  his 
highest  possibilities  and  come  to  the  crown  of  his 
being. 

And,  beyond  controversy,  this  mystical,  anony- 
mous, divine  energy  is  at  work  in  the  world  in  a 
diffused,  imperceptible  form,  carrying  truth,  driving 
conviction,  loosening  prejudice,  arousing  conscience, 
conciliating  attention.  Look  at  the  vast,  heaving, 
tumbling  sea  of  human  life,  with  its  lusts  of  all 
kinds;  its  fevers,  its  greediness,  its  fears,  its  hopes 
and  cravings;  all  its  elemental  passions  and  mighty 
tossings,  and  hungers,  and  thirsts,  that  are  insatiable 
as  Molech — the  wild  beasts  of  the  human  heart,  as 
they  have  been  named — the  insolent,  insubordinate, 
incendiary,  disorderly  traits  and  elements  in  human 
nature;  and  what  keeps  them  tolerably  quiet?  What 
holds  men  back  from  frightful  excesses?  There 
surely  is  a  mighty  restraint  somewhere;  there  is  a 
ubiquitous,  efficacious  influence  at  work,  balancing 
antagonisms,  steadying  the  moral  system,  speaking 
peace  to  the  stormy  winds,  pouring  oil  on  the  waters, 
holding  the  world  compact  lest  it  fly  the  track  and  leap 
into  the  abyss. 

Besides  this,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  this  same 
spiritual  influence  is  also  present  in  some  measure  in 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY  143 

each  individual.  Anyone  who  does  a  good  deed  out 
of  a  pure  motive,  anyone  who  bravely  resists  a  strong 
inducement  to  evil,  anyone  who  carries  himself  justly, 
nobly,  patiently,  magnanimously,  under  irritation  or 
provocation,  accomplishes  this  by  virtue  of  a  divine 
suggestion  and  succor.  Whatever  is  mean,  unlovely, 
unworthy  in  him  is  for  once,  at  least,  subordinated; 
he  rises  above  it,  puts  it  under  his  feet,  acts  man- 
fully, admirably,  heroically  under  trying  circum- 
stances; it  is  God  touching  the  secret  springs  of  the 
soul,  lifting  the  man  above  his  ordinary  level,  and  em- 
powering him  to  do  what  he  could  not  be  trusted  to 
do  in  all  moods,  and  at  all  times. 

Oh,  yes;  men  are  encircled,  escorted,  played  upon 
imconsciously,  by  invisible,  divine  influence.  Around 
all  of  us  pulses  and  plays  this  strange  spiritual  force; 
our  world  swims  and  rolls  in  this  ambient  ether. 
Everyone  who  has  not  by  long  continuance  in  evil- 
doing  waxed  callous  and  dead  as  to  moral  sensibility, 
everyone  in  whom  the  Hght  is  not  become  darkness, 
finds  himself  acting  concurrently  with,  or  in  opposition 
to,  an  indefinable  sentiment,  an  inner  light,  a  profound 
persuasion,  either  accusing  or  excusing  him.  It  is  the 
spirit  of  God.  Well  does  the  Apostles'  Creed  bid  us 
say,  "I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost."  We  must  believe 
in  a  divine  power  of  suggestion,  remonstrance,  in- 
spiration, that  is  able  to  lay  hold  upon  the  human  soul 
and  lift  it  to  higher  altitudes,  and  lead  it  on  to  larger 
truths  and  blessed  certainties.    And  upon  one  occa- 


144  THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY 

sion  Jesus  told  His  disciples  that  God  ''will  give  the 
Holy  Spirit  to  them  that  ask  Him" — a  bold  statement, 
but  He  knew  enough  of  the  Eternal  Father  to  make 
that  large  promise.  Nor  is  there  a  more  splendid, 
hopeful  one  on  record.  The  Holy  Ghost  has  made  all 
the  prophets,  mystics,  saints,  martyrs,  all  those  of 
whom  the  world  has  not  been  worthy.  Nothing  else 
has  raised  men  so  high;  nothing  else  has  given  such 
inw^ard  peace  and  outward  radiant  prospect.  In 
some  ineffable  manner,  God,  the  Infinite  Spirit,  has 
moved  upon  human  souls  from  age  to  age,  has  con- 
vinced them  of  the  poverty  and  transitoriness  of 
this  illusory  world  and  lit  up  new  and  better  hopes 
within  them;  He  has  swept  and  garnished  their  hearts 
and  lifted  their  forlorn  eyes  to  a  happier  and  serener 
sphere. 

If  any  among  you  crave  more  religious  faith, 
more  humility,  more  self-control,  it  is  the  ofhce  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  to  bestov/  these  gifts.  You  must  ask. 
This  is  the  dictum  of  Jesus: — ''If  ye  then,  being  evil, 
know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto  your  children:  how 
much  more  shall  your  heavenly  Father  give  the  Holy 
Spirit  to  them  that  ask  Him?" 

What  amazing  language  it  is !  How  comfortable  and 
encouraging!  Behold  the  confidence,  the  intimate 
familiarity  Jesus  displays  in  speaking  of  God.  He 
pledges  the  Eternal  Father,  so  to  speak;  He  bids  men 
draw  boldly  upon  the  resources  of  the  Infinite;  He 
declares  that  God  is  more  willing  to  impart  of  Himself 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  THE  ALMIGHTY  145 

to  those  who  seek,  than  you  are  to  grant  the  reason- 
able requests  of  your  child.  Is  it  not  a  wonderful 
sentence?  Is  there  anything  Christ  said  more  full  of 
hope  and  promise?  If  you  want  the  highest  good;  if 
you  want  doubt  and  fear  undermined,  and  your  sor- 
rows blessed;  if  you  want  inward  peace  and  an  assur- 
ance of  God's  love  amid  the  alternations  of  life — ask 
for  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  inspiration  of  the  Almighty, 
that  giveth  men  understanding. 


to 


RELIGION— A  PROPHET 

And  as  they  departed,  Jesus  began  to  say  unto  the  multitudes 
concerning  John,  What  went  ye  out  into  the  wilderness  to  see? 
A  reed  shaken  with  the  wind? — Matthew  11:7. 

TIDINGS  from  the  outside  world  reached  John 
the  Baptist  in  the  castle  of  Machgerus  near 
the  Dead  Sea.  His  disciples  appear  to  have 
had  access  to  him  and  to  have  kept  him  informed  con- 
cerning the  work  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  One  day,  the 
record  runs,  he  deputed  a  few  of  his  friends  to  wait 
upon  the  rising  Prophet  and  inquire  of  Him  touching 
His  relation  to  the  Jewish  people,  and  whether  He  were 
the  man  of  prophecy.  What  led  him  to  do  this  is  not 
altogether  clear.  He  had  already  proclaimed  Jesus 
one  whose  shoe  latchet  he  was  not  worthy  to  unloose, 
and  had  called  Him  the  Lamb  of  God  who  would  take 
away  the  sin  of  the  world,  and  the  greater  Man  who 
was  to  come  after  him.  Why,  then,  he  should  send  to 
ask  Him  as  to  His  ofhcial  character  and  expectations, 
has  occasioned  perplexity  and  diversity  of  opinion.  He 
may  have  fallen  into  despondency  and  doubt,  shut  up 
by  Herod  Antipas  in  a  grim,  desolate  fortress,  and  with 
small  prospect  of  release ;  or  he  may  have  intended  to 
give  the  Messiah  an  opportunity  publicly  to  declare 
Himself  and  to  link  His  name  and  fortunes  with  those  of 

146 


RELIGION— A  PROPHET  147 

His  forerunner.     But,  whatever  his  secret  motive,  the 
interview  took  place. 

After  his  disciples  had  withdrawn,  Jesus  began  to 
praise  John,  reminding  the  bystanders  of  his  popu- 
larity at  the  zenith  of  his  fame;  how  the  people 
swarmed  into  the  desert  region  of  the  Jordan  to  see 
and  hear  him  and  to  submit  to  his  baptism.  Sud- 
denly, in  a  quick,  dramatic  manner.  He  turns  upon 
the  crowd  and  inquires  of  them  whom  they  take 
John  to  be,  and  why  they  had  thronged  into  the 
wilderness  to  catch  sight  of  him.  Was  he  like  a  reed 
growing  out  of  the  mire  on  the  banks  of  the  Jordan, 
and  nodding  in  every  passing  breeze?  No,  replies 
Jesus,  he  was  of  tougher  fiber  than  that— a  robust, 
stalwart  man;  dogmatic,  peremptory,  absolute,  and 
not  to  be  shaken  by  the  shifty  winds  of  public  opinion. 
Or,  continues  the  questioner,  was  he  a  delicate,  ef- 
feminate, artificial  creature?  No;  persons  of  such 
fastidious  type  and  sensitive  organization  reside  in 
kings'  courts;  they  do  not  subsist  on  locusts  and  wild 
honey,  in  barren  solitudes.  Well,  then,  if  neither  of 
these,  asks  Jesus  of  the  crowds.  Was  John  a  prophet? 
Yea,  verily;  he  was  all  of  that  and  more,  he  held  a 
special  commission,  was  the  very  man  of  whom  Mala- 
chi  spoke  four  hundred  years  before,  who  would  arrive 
and  announce  himself  on  the  eve  of  the  Messianic 
age.  If  the  nation  would  accept  him  in  that  capacity, 
he  would  be  the  Elijah  whose  return  the  prophet  made 
into  a  foresign  that  the  kingdom  of  God  was  at  the  door. 


148  RELIGION— A  PROPHET 

By  this  series  of  questions  Christ  defined  the  posi- 
tion and  office  of  John,  now  that  his  star  had 
set,  in  the  hearing  of  the  populace.  Evidently  He 
held  a  high  opinion  of  His  forerunner.  He  puts  him 
among  the  splendid  names  of  Hebrew  history,  in  a 
line  with  heroic  souls  who  had  been  faithful  unto  blood. 
In  native  force,  in  nobility  of  soul,  in  moral  courage 
and  sincerity,  in  the  genius  for  rebuke,  correction, 
command,  in  loftiness  of  purpose  and  in  the  ability  to 
arouse  the  torpid  conscience  of  a  jaded  age,  yon 
lonely,  beaten  man,  imprisoned  in  Herod's  castle,  was 
fit  to  be  named  with  mighty  Elijah.  John,  said  Jesus, 
take  him  all  in  all,  is  the  peer  of  any  man  whose 
achievements  have  glorified  your  annals. 

Clearly  no  praise,  no  encomium,  could  be  more  exalted 
than  this.  Besides,  it  shows  that  Jesus  was  not  gov- 
erned by  the  material  standards  that  impress  most  men. 
John  was  now  a  spent  force,  a  dying  echo,  a  fading 
memory.  While  he  moved  amid  the  commotions  of  his 
time,  the  coil  of  difficulties,  the  tangle  of  intrigue,  the 
oppositions  of  vested  interests,  many  thought  him  the 
builder  of  a  new  age;  in  his  hand  an  ax  to  clear  away  the 
dead  roots  and  jungles  of  old  abuses ;  but  he  had  signally 
failed,  was  now  sunken  and  vanished,  his  commanding 
figure  no  longer  to  be  seen.  And  yet,  at  this  nadir  of 
his  fortunes,  Jesus  does  not  desert  him,  stands  nobly 
by  him,  does  not  let  him  pass  out  of  sight  without 
notifying  the  Jewish  world  that  he  is  a  greater  man 
than  they  had  imagined — great  in  his  own  magnifi- 


RELIGION— A  PROPHET  149 

cent  manhood,  and  great  by  reason  of  his  office;  and 
that  while  they  were  caUing  Abraham  their  father  and 
David  their  typical  king,  there  lay  in  the  custody  of 
corrupt  Herod  one  who  was  the  peer  of  the  best,  an 
elect  and  rare  soul  in  all  that  goes  to  make  genuine, 
superlative  excellence.  The  current  adage  success 
succeeds,  although  an  empirical  fact,  did  not  hide 
from  Christ  the  moral  elements  in  a  case  and  all 
ulterior  considerations.  He  could  sympathize  with 
failure  and  defeat  in  a  good  cause  and  a  just  conten- 
tion. John  was  jailed,  but  what  of  that?  He  was  on 
the  right  side — on  the  winning  side;  he  was  related 
to  the  most  hope-laden  revelation  of  history,  as  would 
eventually  appear ;  he  could  afford  to  lie  just  where  he 
was  and  await  the  march  and  evolutions  of  divine 
Providence. 

Observe  the  splendid  courage  of  Christ.  We  do  not 
all  find  the  strength  to  follow  Him  in  this  direction. 
We  are  profoundly  influenced  by  what  we  consider 
the  profitable  and  temporarily  expedient.  We  are 
not  usually  desirous  to  be  identified  with  an  unpopular 
doctrine  or  policy  or  with  a  losing  cause.  We  want  to 
train  with  the  big  battalions,  we  want  to  be  found  on 
the  winning  side.  Most  men  have  not  got  vision  and 
the  gift  of  prophecy,  and  cannot  see  the  long  result  of 
time,  and  have  not  patience  to  await  the  slow  justice 
of  time.  Hence  we  are  in  bondage  to  appearances  and 
externals,  and  judge  all  things  by  the  shrewd  calcula- 
tions of  a  worldly  wisdom.     This  lack  of  insight,  of  a 


150  RELIGION— A  PROPHET 

prophetic  idealism,  makes  men  narrow,  parochial, 
peddling  and  contemptible.  Look  at  the  robust  faith 
of  Christ.  His  brave  herald  was  thrust  into  a  dungeon 
and  His  own  prospects  thereby  overcast,  yet  He 
shows  no  trace  of  timidity;  He  knows  that  God  is 
with  Him,  that  He  has  a  work  to  do  and  must  be  about 
His  Father's  business.  So  He  pauses  for  a  moment  to 
eulogize  John,  and  then  takes  up  His  own  burden, 
not  daunted  by  the  Baptist's  apparent  failure  or 
shaken  by  his  sorry  fate. 

How  aptly  too,  these  queries  addressed  by  Christ 
to  His  hearers  represent  the  moral  attitude  of  men  in 
reference  to  religion.  He  inquired  of  them  what  pre- 
cisely it  was  in  John  that  took  them  out  in  such  vast 
numbers  to  the  Jordan:  whether  they  had  conceived 
of  him  as  a  bowing  bulrush,  or  whether,  when  they 
found  him,  and  heard  his  trenchant  rebukes  and  lurid 
warnings  and  pungent  exhortations,  he  reminded  them 
of  the  fragile  reeds  growing  by  the  river.  Did  he  re- 
semble a  weak,  fluctuating  creature  of  no  resisting 
power  or  stability? 

Now,  adapting  this  question  of  Christ  concerning 
His  precursor,  does  it  not  quite  accurately  symbolize 
a  great  deal  of  current  opinion  respecting  religion? 
Is  it  not  true  that  religion  is  practically  regarded 
by  a  multitude  of  people  as  a  weak  thing;  not 
strong,  manly,  virile;  but  pensive,  visionary,  melan- 
choly; a  thing  that  has  no  relation  to  this  soHd 
world  and  to  the  actualities  of  experience?     Somehow 


RELIGION— A  PROPHET  151 

we  do  not  grasp  it  as  a  reality,  do  not  conceive  of  it 
as  an  energetic,  passionate  force,  a  restraining  prop- 
erty, ransacldng  and  overturning  and  going  to  the 
roots  of  our  nature.  Is  not  this  the  popular  concep- 
tion of  religion,  that  it  is  a  reed  shaking  in  the  wind? 
Men  of  the  world  think  it  a  capital  discovery  for  women 
and  clergymen;  it  may  also  have  some  use  in  seasons 
of  sickness  and  sorrow;  but  it  is  not  adapted  to  a  day 
of  action,  is  not  a  sound  commercial  principle.  Reli- 
gion a  quivering  reed,  a  vague  aspiration,  a  sigh,  a  tear? 
Surely,  it  is  more  than  these.  Let  it  into  mercantile 
life,  pubhc  life,  political  Hfe;  give  it  its  rights,  give  it 
free  course,  let  it  do  its  perfect  work,  and  men  would 
not  choose  a  shaking  reed  as  its  type,  but  rather  the 
earthquake,  tornado, — anything  drastic,  uncompromis- 
ing, thorough,  tremendous.  Once  let  individuals,  cor- 
porations, governments,  model  their  conduct  upon  reli- 
gious precepts  and  principles,  and  who  does  not  see 
that  it  would  cleanse  the  air,  and  abate  long-standing 
nuisances,  and  extinguish  oppression  and  injustice, 
and  banish  frauds  and  lies  and  trickery  and  jobbery, 
and  make  the  world  as  fragrant  as  a  summer  evening 
after  a  storm  is  spent!  Ah,  no;  religion  is  not  a  reed 
shaking  in  the  wind!  It  is  not  only  the  affair  of  the 
weak,  desolate,  distracted,  dying;  it  is  a  reality  to 
live  by,  a  prodigious  force,  a  renovating,  constructive 
principle.  Anyone  who  does  not  find  it  so,  has  not 
appHed  it;  he  holds  it  theoretically,  as  a  respectable 
form,  a  venerable  tradition,  a  curious  survival,  a  great 


152  RELIGION— A  PROPHET 

Perhaps,  and  not  as  an  instant,  imperious,  imperative, 
masterful  truth  of  fact,  with  which  he  must  reckon 
and  whose  requirements  he  must  meet.  No  man  who 
sincerely  strives  to  lead  a  reHgious  Hfe  in  a  world  of 
corruption,  temptation,  provocation  like  this,  will  be 
likely  to  call  the  Christian  ideal  a  weak,  limp,  languid 
thing — a  reed  shaken  by  the  wind.  He  will  be  more 
apt  to  say  that  it  is  too  strong  for  his  weakness;  an 
athletic  virtue  he  cannot  cope  with  and  that  makes 
demands  he  cannot  satisfy. 

Observe  again  that  Christ  inquired  of  the  crowd 
whether  they  had  expected  to  find  John  a  man  clothed 
in  soft  raiment.  Here  also,  without  unduly  straining 
the  language,  we  may  detect  another  prevalent  idea 
or  definition  of  religion,  which  is  likewise  inadequate. 
For  as  it  is  not  a  feeble,  passive  thing,  so  too  it  is  not 
properly  described  as  a  soft,  graceful  thing,  agreeable 
to  the  eye.  There  are  aestheticized  natures,  in  whom 
sensibility  and  emotion  largely  preponderate.  Such 
temperaments  show  a  tendency  to  lay  stress  upon  the 
outward  husks  and  flourishes  of  reHgion.  They  as- 
sociate it  with  an  ornate  and  elaborate  service,  with 
ecclesiastical  furniture,  symbohcal  colors,  emblematic 
designs,  impressive  forms  and  aesthetic  effects.  This 
is  well,  up  to  a  set  limit,  and  may  be  of  spiritual 
use  to  a  multitude  of  souls.  One  of  the  clamant  needs 
of  the  Protestant  Church  to-day  is  to  defend  itself  from 
vulgarity  and  to  maintain  dignity  and  decorum  in 
the  conduct  of  public  worship.     And  while  religion  is 


RELIGION— A  PROPHET  153 

certainly  not  an  affair  of  vestments,  lights,  and  pic- 
tured windows,  it  is  quite  possible  to  push  to  the  op- 
posite excess  and  to  ahenate  from  the  church  persons 
of  education,  taste  and  refinement,  who  believe  in 
order  and  the  proprieties,  and  cannot  stand  the  un- 
worthy conduct  of  religious  service.  Men  are  coarse, 
hard  and  sordid  enough,  and  they  ought  to  find  in  the 
church  something  to  exalt  and  enrich  and  deepen  their 
natures.  At  the  same  time  religion  is  not  soft  raiment. 
It  does  not  consist  in  admiration  of  the  carved  work  of 
the  sanctuary,  or  its  dim,  mystical  light,  hieratic  pomp 
and  evolutions  of  gorgeous  ceremony — in  anything 
ocular  and  outward ;  these  may  sometimes  help  the  spirit 
to  ascend,  but  they  are  not  of  the  essence  of  religion. 

It  is  eiitirely  possible  also  for  one  to  launch  out 
with  the  fervor  of  a  seraph  upon  the  billows  of  a 
favorite  hymn,  and  yet  to-morrow  drive  a  hard  bar- 
gain, join  an  iniquitous  combination,  take  an  unfair 
advantage,  show  one's  self  as  mean,  small  and  con- 
temptible as  a  man  need  care  to  be.  Religion  is  not 
soft  raiment;  it  is  not  merely  singing  about  holiness 
and  heaven;  it  is  not  a  shallow  sentiment,  a  melting 
mood,  a  venerable  tradition  received  from  parents  or 
descending  Kke  silver  plate,  an  aft'air  of  flowers,  music, 
spectacle  and  elegant  appointments; — these  adjuncts 
may  be  present  and  may  be  of  use,  but  should  be  care- 
fully distinguished  from  the  thing  they  enshrine,  the 
reality  they  symbolize. 

Nor  should  men  object  to  direct,  practical,  per- 


154  RELIGION— A  PROPHET 

sonal  preaching,  that  searches  one's  life  and  enters 
like  iron  into  the  soul,  that  rebukes  silly  customs 
and  fashionable  lies,  pompous  shams,  political  jobs, 
and  social  evils — all  the  venality  and  vileness  that 
stalk  abroad.  The  Hebrew  prophets  evidently  did 
that  kind  of  preaching.  They  all  tried  to  prod  and 
rouse  the  dormant  conscience  of  their  times.  And 
in  every  age  it  is  undoubtedly  the  function  of  preaching 
to  make  men  realize  acutely  that  they  are  not  what 
they  ought  to  be ;  to  probe  and  expose  the  dry  rot  and 
moral  decay  that  honeycomb  society  and  threaten  to 
bring  it  down  now  and  then  in  tumbling  confusion. 
But  there  be  those  who  object  to  the  use  of  this 
fire  and  hammer  that  strikes  and  shatters;  and,  con- 
fessedly, it  needs  to  be  used  cautiously  and  in  the 
spirit  of  love.  Nevertheless  religion  is  not  a  tune  all 
in  the  minor  key;  it  is  not  simply  a  homily  about 
heaven,  forgiveness,  meekness,  charity;  it  is  masculine 
and  aggressive,  and  requires  truth  in  the  inward 
parts;  it  divides  asunder  joints  and  marrow,  and  dis- 
covers the  thoughts  and  intents  of  the  heart.  Let  us 
not,  then,  criticize  preaching  if  sometimes  it  disturbs, 
interferes,  interrupts,  agitates,  puts  us  on  the  defen- 
sive, is  not  agreeable,  is  not  always  as  soothing, 
sweet  and  consoling  as  we  would  like — for  it  is  not  a 
man  in  soft  raiment. 

Once  more  Christ  inquired  of  those  present  whether 
they  took  John  for  a  prophet.  And  to  this  He  replied 
affirmatively,  and  added  that  he  was  a  prophet  of  a 


RELIGION— A  PROPHET  155 

high  order,  exceptional  even  in  that  line,  in  that  he 
was  the  last  of  the  prophets  and  herald  of  the  Messiah. 
And  is  it  not  evident  that  this  language  also  can  be 
accommodated,  and  will  serve  as  a  description  of  re- 
ligion? Is  it  not  also  a  prophet — a  voice  crying  in  the 
wilderness,  "Repent  ye:  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
at  hand"?  What  is  there  more  prophetic  in  the  world 
than  the  rehgious  sentiment  in  man?  What  else  is 
there  so  deep,  mystical,  solemn,  supernatural  on  earth 
as  this,  that  man  can  think  about  God  and  worlds  to 
come!  Religion  as  a  fixture  of  this  sensual  world  is 
the  most  suggestive  and  sublime  fact  in  it.  It  points 
beyond  nature  to  the  supernatural;  it  tells  us  that 
we  are  drifting  toward  a  splendid  mystery,  toward 
unknown  realms,  a  more  abundant  revelation.  It 
suggests  the  possibihty  that  we  may  put  on  a  finer 
organism,  a  more  complete  nature,  and  that  death  is 
only  the  birth  cry  of  a  new  Hfe  akin  to  the  eternal  Hfe 
of  God.  It  teaches  us  that  God  is  holy,  just  and 
good,  the  sum  of  all  perfections,  and  that  to  dwell  with 
Him  and  enjoy  Him  we  must  be  Hke  Him.  ReHgion 
is  truly  a  prophet ;  it  has  the  promise  not  only  of  the 
life  that  now  is,  but  of  one  to  come.  All  man's  other 
faculties  and  capacities  can  find  fulfillment  here ;  his 
intellect,  appetites,  will,  active  powers,  get  scope  here 
and  materials  to  feed  upon;  but  there  is  an  infinite 
element  or  potentiahty  in  him  which  predicts  a  higher 
and  fuller  existence,  and  he  feels  the  pull  upon  him  of 
the  unseen  and  eternal. 


IS6  RELIGION— A  PROPHET 

Probably  the  most  comprehensive,  compendious 
word  that  we  can  use  about  reHgion  is,  that  it  is 
a  blessed  hope,  which  if  one  have,  he  will  purify  him- 
self accordingly;  it  is  a  prophet  in  the  soul  point- 
ing toward  a  diviner  world,  and  bidding  men  get 
ready  for  it  by  keeping  themselves  unspotted  from 
this  one.  Religion,  of  necessity,  has  a  large  ele- 
ment of  prophecy  and  of  hope.  It  was  this  fact  that 
made  the  Jews,  by  preeminence,  the  religious  people 
of  antiquity.  Besides  them,  there  was  no  nation 
in  the  Mediterranean  world  that  consciously  hoped. 
The  Roman  world,  the  heathen  world,  was  profoundly 
depressed  and  despairing  respecting  the  eternal  prob- 
lems of  thought;  Israel  alone  had  prophecy  and  hope; 
and  they  are  integral  to  religion  in  any  real  sense. 
This  is  the  most  general  account  we  can  give  of  it,  that 
it  brings  this  present  Hfe  under  the  power  of  a  Hfe  to 
come. 

Oh,  yes;  religion  is  a  sublime  prophecy!  It  is 
concerned  with  ideas,  promises,  possibilities,  truths, 
that  lie  at  present  below  our  horizon,  yet  by  which 
we  may  shape  our  course  and  govern  our  lives.  It 
speaks  of  God  and  immortality  and  spiritual  per- 
fection; it  reminds  us  that  the  things  that  are  seen  are 
temporal;  it  encourages  us  to  cherish  high  ambitions 
and  great  expectations,  and  to  live  worthy  of  them. 
It  instructs,  exhorts,  rebukes,  comforts,  inspires. 
Like  John,  by  the  Jordan,  it  is  a  prophet,  foretelling  a 
coming  Messiah,  a  kingdom  of  Christ,  a  kingdom  of 


RELIGION— A  PROPHET  157 

righteousness  and  love.  What,  then,  went  ye  out  to 
see?  What  do  you  thmk  of  religion,  what  do  you 
take  it  to  be?  A  pious  tradition,  a  respectable  form, 
a  doctrine,  a  priest,  a  sacrament,  a  bit  of  poetry,  a 
beautiful  parable,  or  an  unproved  hypothesis,  an  idle 
tale?  Is  there  indeed  a  God,  a  heaven,  an  eternal 
salvation  from  sin  and  suffering,  an  eternal  life  of  pro- 
gressive growth  in  all  the  best  elements  of  personality, 
an  eternal  Christ?  Religion  says  so.  What  do  you 
think?  Is  it  a  true  prophet,  do  you  believe  its  message, 
and  do  you  live  as  though  you  believe  it? 


THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL 

And  Elisha  prayed ,  mid  said,  Lord,  I  pray  thee,  open  his 
eyes,  that  he  see.  And  the  Lord  opened  the  eyes  of  the  young 
man;  and  he  saw:  and,  behold,  the  mountain  was  ftdl  of 
horses  and  chariots  of  fire  round  about  Elisha. — II  Kings 
6:  17. 

THE  spiritual  succession  passed  over  to  Elisha 
after  Elijah  had  been  removed  from  the  pub- 
lic stage.  No  reader  of  the  Old  Testament 
can  fail  to  observe  the  immense  influence  exercised  by 
these  two  mighty  masters.  In  their  time,  the  schools  of 
the  prophets  founded  by  Samuel,  and  composed  of 
young  men  who  proposed  to  devote  themselves  to  the 
prophetic  office  and  to  submit  themselves  to  the  neces- 
sary discipline  and  training,  touched  their  high-water 
mark.  Both  Elijah  and  Elisha  appear  to  have  been 
followed  and  attended  by  these  candidates  for  holy 
orders,  to  use  a  current  phrase  of  our  own  day.  For, 
albeit  the  power  of  prophecy  could  not  be  imparted, 
but  was  a  divine  gift  or  calling, — not  a  thing  to  be 
taught  out  of  books  or  communicated  orally, — it  was 
still  an  inestimable  privilege  to  be  admitted  to  the  com- 
panionship of  a  great  prophet,  a  man  of  religious 
genius  and  commanding  personality,  and  so  to  be  put 
in  the  way  of  getting,  by  his  infectious  influence  and 
enthusiasm,  a  fraction,  at  least,  of  his  singular  power. 

158 


THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL  159 

Elisha  was  the  acknowledged  spiritual  leader  of  his 
day  in  Israel,  some  850  years  B.  C,  as  EKjah  had 
been  before  him,  and  as  Samuel  was  in  his  time,  and 
Moses  in  his.  He  had  received  his  call  or  ordination 
from  Elijah,  who  doubtless  perceived  that  he  was  the 
man  for  the  hour,  had  a  genuine  ring,  and  was  duly 
qualified  by  a  robust  and  virile  nature,  as  well  as  by 
religious  faith,  to  stand  for  order  and  righteousness  and 
for  the  ancient  covenant  made  with  the  children  of 
Israel.  And  he  abundantly  justified  the  choice  and 
achieved  a  moral  ascendancy  and  leadership  in  his  age. 

The  Hebrew  prophets  were  public  men  and  gave  their 
judgment  on  public  questions, — social  customs,  diplo- 
matic relations,  dynastic  successions,  political  revolu- 
tions, declarations  of  war  and  treaties  of  peace.  They  re- 
buked kings,  they  publicly  denounced  or  approved  the 
royal  policy,  they  preached  against  idolatry  and  warned 
the  people  against  false  prophets  and  false  priests. 
They  constituted  a  unique  order,  the  like  of  which 
has  not  been  seen  since.  There  have  been  excep- 
tional individuals,  men  of  splendid  courage,  and  moral 
elevation  and  heroism,  who  have  been  pathfinders  and 
have  made  epochs  in  history,  but  there  has  been,  out- 
side of  Israel,  no  long  succession  of  men,  with  a  genius 
for  moral  ideas,  who  have  claimed  to  stand  as  God's 
accredited  messengers. 

It  was  in  northern  Israel  that  Elisha  plied  his 
ministry.  Jehoram,  son  of  Ahab  and  Jezebel,  was 
king  at  that  date,  and  had  his  hands  full  by  reason  of 


i6o  THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL 

wars  with  the  Syrians,  whose  capital  was  Damascus. 
Like  all  the  prophets,  Elisha  thought  it  quite  within 
his  right  to  take  a  hand  in  public  affairs  and  counsel 
Jehoram  in  his  difficulties.  By  a  preternatural  in- 
sight he  revealed  to  him  the  military  maneuvers  and 
moves  on  the  chessboard  of  war  by  which  Benhadad 
of  Damascus  hoped  to  outflank  and  entrap  him.  The 
continual  failure  of  his  best-laid  plans  naturally  puzzled 
the  Syrian  monarch,  who  suspected  there  was  a 
traitor  in  the  camp,  playing  into  the  hands  of  the  king 
of  Israel  for  a  consideration.  But  upon  inquiry  of  a 
responsible  person,  he  was  told  that  Elisha  was  at  the 
bottom  of  Jehoram's  apparent  omniscience:  *'The 
prophet  that  is  in  Israel,  telleth  the  king  of  Israel  the 
words  that  thou  speakest  in  thy  bedchamber."  Such 
being  the  situation,  the  only  remedy  was  to  arrest  the 
prophet  and  thus  put  a  period  to  his  pernicious  activity. 
Learning  that  he  was  at  Dothan,  a  town  not  far 
from  Samaria,  Benhadad  invested  it,  intending  to 
bring  him  a  captive  to  Damascus.  So  it  came  to 
pass  that  one  morning,  EHsha's  servant  awoke  to  dis- 
cover an  army  of  Syrians  girdling  the  town,  and  in- 
stantly reported  to  his  master  the  alarming  intelligence 
and  their  desperate  straits.  The  great  man  did  not 
take  the  same  gloomy  view  of  the  crisis,  but  heartened 
his  servant  by  the  confident  assurance  of  invisible  re- 
enforcements,  and  prayed  God  to  open  his  eyes  to  the 
sight  of  them.  And  the  record  reads:  ''The  Lord 
opened  the  eyes  of  the  young  man;  and  he  saw:  and, 


THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL  i6i 

behold,  the  mountain  was  full  of  horses  and  chariots  of 
fire  round  about  Elisha." 

This  old  Hebrew  narrative  is  suggestive  in  several 
directions.  Elisha's  young  servant  was  furnished  with 
the  organs  of  vision,  but  it  appears  that  he  did  not  see 
all  that  there  was  to  be  seen,  he  did  not  see  what  his 
master  saw.  He  got  a  set  of  sensations,  or  mental 
impressions,  resulting  from  the  action  of  external  forms 
upon  him,  and  these  in  his  case  were  the  Syrians  en- 
camped before  Dothan.  But  behind  them  was  an- 
other and  mightier  host,  for  the  recognition  of  which 
natural  sight  was  not  sufficient;  he  needed  a  more 
powerful  organ  than  the  eye  of  flesh  to  bring  it  within 
range. 

Indeed,  this  whole  question  of  seeing  and  percep- 
tion is  a  very  interesting  one.  One  person  sees  more 
than  another.  The  logician  can  see  a  fallacy  lurking 
in  a  statement  which  the  average  man  would  let  pass 
unchallenged.  The  metaphysician,  the  theologian,  can 
detect  the  implications  and  tendencies  and  logical 
issues  of  a  proposition  which  one  ignorant  of  the 
history  of  doctrines,  and  whose  mind  is  not  trained  to 
make  fine  distinctions,  would  fail  to  apprehend.  It 
is  abundantly  evident  that  there  is  more  in  the 
world  and  in  the  great  universe  to  be  seen  than  the 
sense  of  natural  sight  is  equal  to.  Everyone  sees 
just  so  far  and  so  deep  as  he  is  prepared  and  edu- 
cated to  see.  And  it  has  been  a  chief  endeavor  of 
philosophy  in  every  age  to  explain  the  connection  that 
II 


i62  THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL 

exists  between  the  human  mind  and  the  external,  vis- 
ible imiverse.  What  do  we  really  see?  What  is  it  that 
the  mind  comes  into  immediate  contact  or  commerce 
with,  when  we  look  out  upon  space  and  the  material 
objects  that  occupy  it? 

Several  systems  of  thought  have  attempted  to 
answer  this  question.  There  are  those  who  de- 
fend the  reahty  of  the  universe.  These  are  re- 
alists, and  hold  that  in  sense  perception  we  know 
things  directly  as  external  to  ourselves  and  seize 
reality  at  once.  This  is  the  so-called  school  of  com- 
mon sense.  A  slight  modification  of  this  view  affirms 
that  what  the  mind  sees  is  not  the  thing  itself, 
but  a  vicarious  image  of  it — the  impression  which  it 
makes  upon  the  sense,  some  intermediate  form  be- 
tween the  object  and  the  percipient  self.  Then  there 
is  the  famous  theory  of  idealism, — that  nothing  can  be 
perceived  except  ideas;  that  matter  and  things  exist 
only  in  mind  and  for  mind,  and  that  without  mind  the 
idea  of  matter  would  be  absurd.  What  we  call  body, 
material  substance,  what  we  see,  is  nothing  real  in 
itself,  but  only  a  complex  of  ideas  or  images  which  the 
mind  is  obliged  to  create  and  which  would  not  exist 
without  it.  Conscious,  thinking  persons  alone  exist; 
everything  else  is  a  mode  of  the  mind's  existence,  a 
projection  of  mind.  Then  there  is  a  philosophical 
skepticism,  which  holds  that  if  there  be  an  external 
universe,  it  must  be  something  very  different  from 
what  it  appears  to  us  to  be;  that  everything  is  relative 


THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL  163 

to  the  mind  that  looks  at  it  and  cognizes  it.  An  an- 
cient Greek  philosopher  remarked  that  oxen  or  lions 
would  certainly  worship  a  great  ox  or  lion,  and  Spin- 
oza said  that  if  a  triangle  could  make  a  creed,  it  would 
assert  that  God  is  eminently  triangular.  In  other 
words,  absolute  truth  is  unattainable — the  man  is  the 
measure  of  his  universe. 

Unquestionably,  for  creatures  constituted  as  we 
are  and  armed  with  only  five  organic  senses, 
the  world  of  objects  and  things  is  practically  what 
we  take  it  to  be.  It  would  be  dangerous  for  any- 
one to  assum.e  that  it  is  other  than  what  it  ap- 
pears. Yet  it  is  also  perfectly  thinkable  that  if  man 
had  a  sixth  sense,  or  was  implemented  with  two  or 
three  more  inlets  or  organs  of  sensation  in  addition  to 
those  he  already  has,  the  universe  might  take  on  a 
very  different  aspect.  What  this  world  looks  Hke  to 
beings  of  larger  intellect  and  finer  penetration  and 
deeper  insight,  and  who  occupy  higher  altitudes  than 
man  does;  how  it  appears  to  the  angelic  hierarchy, 
and  to  rational  creatures  such  as  we  can  imagine,  who 
expatiate  through  unknown  realms  and  other  places 
of  God's  universe — this  is,  of  course,  matter  of  pure 
conjecture.  But  it  may  easily  be,  as  everyone  must 
acknowledge,  that  to  such,  this  revolving  globe  and 
these  secular  ages  which  we  call  time,  may  offer  quite  a 
different  front  and  compose  a  totally  different  spec- 
tacle from  that  which  daily  salutes  us  mortal  men,  who 
can  only  get  knowledge  of  it  through  five  narrow  inlets. 


i64  THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL 

At  any  rate  this  conclusion  is  supported  analogically 
by  reference  to  the  lower  animals,  the  subhuman  crea- 
tion. Surely,  the  earth  and  the  world  which  the  ox  or 
the  horse  looks  out  upon  from  the  meadow  is  not  the 
world  which  you  see.  And,  by  parity  of  reasoning,  if 
there  be  loftier,  nobler,  more  splendid  and  powerful 
beings  in  the  unseen  universe — angels,  archangels, 
seraphim,  sons  of  eternity,  equipped  with  faculties 
and  energies  of  which  man  has  no  present  experience- 
it  is  easy  to  see,  and  one  is  forced  to  admit,  that  such 
magnificent  creatures  may,  yea,  must,  see  the  world 
and  time,  this  whole  secular  process  of  which  we  are  a 
part,  in  a  somewhat  different  light,  under  a  different 
form  and  aspect  from  what  it  shows  itself  to  us  with 
our  stringent  human  limitations.  And  this  also  may 
be,  probably  is,  true  of  those  whom  we  call  the  dead. 

It  is  this  line  of  argument  which  has  led  some 
thinkers,  in  their  reflections  upon  the  problem  of 
being,  and  the  meaning  of  existence,  to  preach  the 
doctrine  that  man  is  not  in  touch  with  reality.  What 
he  sees  and  finds  out  and  knows  is  practically  sufficient 
to  guide  him  and  keep  him  out  of  danger,  but  it  is  not 
the  whole  truth  of  fact.  The  essential,  underlying 
absolute  truth  he  is  unable  to  apprehend  on  his 
present  level.  To  this  point  moved  the  famous  illus- 
tration of  Plato,  that  man  is  like  one  who  sits  in  a 
dimly  lighted  cavern  with  his  back  to  the  mouth  of  it 
and  stares  at  shadows  flitting  across  the  wall.  The 
world  of  sense,  he  held,  is  a  world  of  shadows,  but 


THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL  165 

behind  and  above  it  there  is  a  world  of  ideas,  arche- 
types, patterns,  of  which  the  things  we  see — all  partic- 
ulars, all  sensible  objects — are  only  a  dim  and  im- 
perfect copy.  These  ideas  and  forms  according  to 
which  God  made  the  world  are  the  true  and  real  ex- 
istences, while  what  men  see  and  apprehend  are 
merely  fragments,  adumbrations  of  the  true  and 
eternal.  It  is  a  fascinating  hypothesis.  Probably 
there  is  truth  in  it,  though  undoubtedly  there  is  some- 
thing solid  and  substantial,  as  our  senses  report  to  us, 
upon  which  we  plant  our  feet  and  build  our  houses. 
For  practical  regulative  purposes  this  is  all  we  need 
to  know;  nevertheless,  the  great  spiritual  thinkers  are 
right  in  reminding  us  that  we  walk  amid  shadows, 
phenomena,  appearances,  and  are  not  in  contact  with 
the  ultimate  fact  and  essential  truth  or  being.  We 
do  not  know  what  matter  is,  or  mind,  or  the  mode  in 
which  they  interact,  or  how  God  exists  and  fills  all 
spaces.  Our  life  is  a  limited,  defective  one,  good  for 
the  present  distress,  adequate  to  the  present  exigency; 
but  could  we  open  our  eyes,  could  we  get  more  powerful 
and  far-reaching  vision,  could  we  look  underneath  the 
showy,  superficial  crust  of  life,  and  behind  the  curtain 
of  the  phenomenal  universe,  we  might  soon  see  that 
what  we  take  for  reality  is,  so  to  speak,  a  dance  of 
shadow  shapes,  a  play  of  phantasms.  What  befell 
Elisha's  servant  might  quite  conceivably  happen  to 
us.  We  might  see  the  air  full  of  horses  and  chariots, 
the  very  equipage  of  the  Almighty. 


i66  THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL 

Consider,  further,  that  our  life  in  this  world  and  its 
content  of  experience  may  be  aptly  described  by  this 
language  of  the  prophet,  as  an  opening  of  the  eyes  to 
what  is  hidden  and  unknown.  This,  fundamentally, 
is  what  life  signifies  for  a  rational  and  reflective  being 
like  man.  His  constitution  indicates  that  he  was 
intended  to  be  a  progressive,  ever-advancing  creature. 
He  has  been  endowed  with  the  precious  gift  of  intel- 
lectual curiosity  and  has  been  set  down  amid  a  world 
of  wonders,  of  mysteries,  of  insolubilities,  that  chal- 
lenge him  at  every  turn.  The  universe  and  man  are 
correlated;  it  holds  the  secrets,  he  is  here  to  find  the 
clue,  to  fit  the  right  key  into  the  lock.  This  is  one  of 
the  chief  arguments  in  favor  of  a  supreme  thinker,  a 
divine  reason,  a  designing  mind  as  the  prius  and  author 
of  all  existence.  We  infer  that  the  universe  is  rational, 
the  product  or  effect  of  reason,  because  man,  who  is 
himself  rational  and  a  thinker,  can  discover  its  laws, 
observe  its  nice  adaptations,  and  perceive  its  teleology, 
and  how  means  and  ends  are  adjusted  and  balanced. 
He  perceives  that  the  laws  of  geometry  underlie  the 
frame  of  nature;  his  mathematics  satisfies  him  that 
something  of  the  sort  was  implicated  in  the  construc- 
tion of  the  all.  There  must  be  a  rational,  consecutive 
mind  behind  the  universe,  because  he  can  follow  its 
operations  and  calculations.  This  is  a  very  cogent 
argument  for  theism.  If  the  universe  were  a  muddle, 
a  babel,  an  unbounded  deep  of  inextricable  confusion, 
man  could  make  nothing  out  of  it.     He  might  well 


THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL  167 

conclude,  if  he  could  survive  at  all  amid  such  a  mingle- 
mangle  and  chaos  of  incoherencies  and  cross-purposes, 
that  it  was  indeed  the  result  of  blind  chance,  a  toss  of 
dice.  But  such  is  not  the  case.  The  world  of  nature 
is  a  rational  and  ordered  whole.  Its  very  intelligible- 
ness  founds  a  presumption  that  cannot  be  easily  re- 
butted in  favor  of  a  rational  and  designing  mind,  as  the 
responsible  author  of  it.  This  fact  has  been  recog- 
nized by  all  religious  thinkers  and  cannot  easily  be 
evaded  by  irreligious  ones.  It  certainly  calls  for  ex- 
planation how  and  why  man,  who  is  a  mind,  can  under- 
stand the  universe  and  perceive  its  rationality  if  there 
is  no  mind  in  it,  no  God  who  spread  out  the  heavens 
and  made  Arcturus  and  Orion,  who  causes  the  day- 
spring  to  know  his  place,  and  has  hung  the  earth  upon 
nothing,  and  has  set  bars  and  doors  to  the  sea,  and  said 
unto  it,  "Hitherto  shalt  thou  come,  but  no  further." 
And,  considered  in  its  deepest  meaning,  this  is  the 
chief  end  and  highest  privilege  of  man,  to  get  his  eyes 
opened  that  he  may  see  God  behind  the  mechanism  of 
nature  and  in  every  event  of  life,  Hke  as  Elisha's  ser- 
vant had  his  vision  unsealed  to  see  behind  and  above  the 
Syrian  army,  horses  and  chariots  of  fire,  hovering  in  the 
still  air,  round  about  Elisha.  For  this,  after  all  is  said 
and  done,  is  the  great  thing — to  get  vision,  insight, 
metaphysical  convictions,  a  faith  that  is  the  substance 
of  things  not  seen.  This  is  really  the  supreme  good,  the 
finest  result  of  living  in  this  dim  and  troublous  world. 
"Open  the  young  man's   eyes  that  he  may  see," 


i68  THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL 

prayed  Elisha.  Surely  this  is  the  great  desideratum. 
What  man  wants,  what  he  needs  above  all  else,  is  to 
see  the  world  in  just  ratios;  to  see  Hfe  as  it  is,  what 
it  means,  what  it  involves,  whither  it  tends,  its  pro- 
phetic quality,  its  criticalness,  its  solemnity,  the  eter- 
nal element  in  it. 

Oh,  no;  we  have  not  got  the  right  vision  yet. 
Man  walks  in  a  vain  show  and  amid  dissolving  views. 
He  Hves  upon  the  conventional,  ceremonial  crust; 
he  mistakes  large  things  for  small  and  small  for  large; 
he  is  concerned  with  names,  forms,  formulas,  phrases, 
fictions,  shadows,  and  has  not  got  a  grip  of  reality, 
does  not  know  a  great  soul  when  he  sees  one,  but 
shouts  himself  hoarse  over  some  clever  demagogue 
or  mountebank.  Vision,  discernment,  the  power  to 
discriminate  and  divide  between  the  good  and  the  evil, 
the  temporal  and  the  eternal,  that  which  is  temporarily 
profitable,  but  eventually  and  eternally  unprofitable 
and  inexpedient — this  rapid  intuition  and  sure  instinct 
is  not  a  characteristic  note  of  mankind,  has  not  been 
developed  to  anything  like  its  highest  power.  Hence 
result  the  false  standards  and  false  measurements  that 
abound,  and  the  inverted  estimates  we  put  upon  men 
and  things.  Market  values  thus  come  to  loom  larger 
and  more  important  than  moral  values,  and  men  are 
rated  by  what  they  have  and  not  by  what  they  es- 
sentially are.  It  is  all  because  our  eyes  are  not  opened 
to  see  the  basic  realities,  to  distinguish  between  the 
genuine   metal   and   the   counterfeit.     Look   at   this 


THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL  169 

matter  narrowly  and,  if  I  do  not  err,  it  will  appear  that 
here  lies  a  fundamental  defect  that  is  answerable  for 
much  of  the  perplexity,  anxiety,  skepticism  and  re- 
bellion there  is  in  the  world.  Every  human  Hfe  is  full 
of  turmoil  and  trouble,  change  and  disappointment. 
Defeat,  overthrow  of  one  kind  and  another,  failure  to 
get,  or  to  do,  or  to  be  what  one  would  like,  the  col- 
lapse of  fond  hopes  and  great  ambitions — these  are 
common  experiences.  And  if  a  man  rests  in  it  as  ulti- 
mate and  final,  life  must  seem  to  him  a  chaotic  darkness, 
a  hopeless  muddle,  a  dirge,  a  place  of  skulls. 

In  order  that  he  may  be  reconciled  to  the  dark  things 
of  his  experience,  he  must  find  a  soul  of  goodness  in 
things  evil,  honey  in  the  lion's  carcass,  light  in  darkness. 
This  is  the  only  saving  clause,  the  only  sign  of  promise 
and  star  of  hope  for  any  tossed  and  troubled  voyager  on 
life's  sea.  He  must  get  his  eyes  open  to  see,  beyond  the 
drifting  clouds  and  hurly-burly  and  racket  of  his  un- 
profitable years,  something  better,  something  satisfy- 
ing, for  which  they  are  the  necessary  preparation,  and 
which  will  fully  interpret  them.  Devoid  of  this 
divination,  this  sight  of  the  soul,  no  mortal  man  can 
rest  satisfied  in  such  a  shifting  scene  as  this,  battered 
by  the  shocks  and  storms  that  break  over  him.  It  is 
absolutely  essential  to  his  peace  that  he  look  beyond, 
and  see  something  there  fit  to  expound  all  that  puzzles 
and  appalls  and  confounds  him  now. 

Moreover,  it  is  probably  true  that  if  we  had  this 
deeper  and  keener  vision,  the  things  which  now  fret  and 


I70  THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL 

vex  and  disturb  us  would  cease  to  worry,  and  would  take 
on  their  true  proportions  and  be  seen  and  recognized 
to  be  what  they  are — incidental,  peripheral,  compara- 
tively indifferent.  This  is  really  a  fundamental  lack  of 
our  nature,  a  clamant  need,  the  power  to  see  what  is 
essentially  valuable  and  desirable  and  enduring,  and  to 
live  for  that.  This  defect  accounts  for  the  multitudes 
who  are  trying  to  extract  out  of  this  perishing  world 
what  it  has  not  got  and  was  never  intended  to  give. 
It  accounts  for  the  many  who  run  greedily  after  some 
inferior  good,  as  though  that,  once  attained,  their 
cravings  would  be  quieted,  and  their  aspirations  sat- 
isfied. Their  eyes  are  not  opened  to  see  something 
better  than  material  gratifications;  that  is,  the  inward, 
intrinsic  worth  of  the  individual  himself,  his  destiny 
and  how  best  he  may  achieve  his  perfection.  What 
an  empty  chase  much  of  our  striving  and  straining 
would  seem  to  us  to  be,  could  we  see  life  stripped  of 
its  sensuous  accompaniments,  its  blaze  and  blare  all 
subsided,  and  over  against  and  beyond  it  the  city  of 
God,  the  domes  and  spires  of  the  Apocalypse! 

And  EHsha  prayed  the  Lord,  '^  Open  the  young  man's 
eyes  that  he  may  see."  It  is  the  only  cure  for  our 
secularism  and  materialism,  to  catch  sight  of  the 
spiritual  world,  the  outer  infinite,  the  sphere  of  Deity, 
the  throne  of  God,  the  sea  of  glass,  and  the  rushing 
splendors  of  that  inconceivable  estate.  This  is  really 
the  supreme  question  for  us:  Do  we  see  anything  be- 
yond these  temporalities,  this  world  of  eye  and  ear, 


THE  SIGHT  OF  THE  SOUL  171 

its  trade,  its  politics,  its  fugitive  fashions?  Do  we 
live  under  the  power  of  great  convictions?  Whoso- 
ever habitually  does  this  is  the  spiritual  man  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  natural  man,  concerning  whom 
Paul  writes,  that  he  *' judge th  all  things."  His  citi- 
zenship is  in  the  heavens,  he  walks  with  God,  he  looks 
for  the  kingdom  of  God. 

So  then,  I  conclude,  EHsha's  prayer  for  his  young 
servant  should  be  our  prayer.  For  what  could  pos- 
sibly give  more  breadth  and  elevation  to  any  child 
of  man  than  just  this,  to  bring  eternity  into  time,  to 
make  Httle  of  small  things  and  much  of  great  things, 
and  to  endure  as  seeing  God,  who  is  invisible.  "And 
the  Lord  opened  the  eyes  of  the  young  man;  and  he 
saw:  and,  behold,  the  mountain  was  full  of  horses  and 
chariots  of  fire  round  about  Elisha.'* 


FROM  MAN  TO  GOD 

He  that  planted  the  ear,  shall  he  not  hear?    He  that  formed  the 
eye,  shall  he  not  see? — Psalm  94  :  9. 

THIS  statement  is  argumentative.  The  Psalm- 
ist was  living  evidently  in  a  troublous  time, 
when  judges  were  corrupt  and  suitors  could 
not  get  justice,  when  human  rights  were  outraged,  and 
the  weak  and  defenseless  lay  at  the  cruel  mercies  of 
the  unprincipled  and  powerful.  The  state  of  society 
roused  his  moral  indignation,  and  he  inquired  of  the 
oppressors  what  kind  of  being  they  took  the  God  of 
Israel  to  be,  and  whether  they  supposed  He  was  not 
cognizant  of  their  insolence,  arrogance  and  injus- 
tice. Suddenly  he  took  a  philosophical  turn:  ''He 
that  planted  the  ear,  shall  he  not  hear?  He  that  formed 
the  eye,  shall  he  not  see?"  In  other  words,  if  men 
can  see  and  hear,  a  fortiori  shall  not  God  apprehend 
and  know  what  is  going  on  upon  the  earth,  and  the 
high-handed  way  in  which  those  tyrants,  whom  the 
Psalmist  denounces,  are  behaving?  The  language 
is  plainly  inferential;  it  argues  from  effect  to  cause. 
It  implies  that  whatever  is  in  the  effect,  must  some- 
how, and  to  a  sufficient  degree  be  found  in  the  cause. 
It  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  because  man  has 
an  organ  called  the  ear  God  must  be  also  furnished 

172 


FROM  MAN  TO  GOD  173 

with  a  similar  organ ;  it  only  means  that  God  can  hear. 
It  does  not  mean  that  the  human  eye  is  exactly  re- 
produced, so  to  speak,  as  a  feature  of  the  divine  Being; 
it  only  means  that  God  can  see,  that  He  is  aware  of 
what  is  being  done  in  His  universe.  It  advises  the 
unconscionable  men  who  abused  their  power  and 
were  ''strutting  in  their  Httle  brief  authority,"  that 
God  who  had  made  them  and  their  faculties  was  surely 
greater  than  they  and  knew  all  about  them. 

The  text,  then,  is  an  example  of  argument  from 
effect  to  cause,  from  the  less  to  the  greater.  It  is 
perfectly  obvious  that  we  are  largely  beholden  to  this 
instrument  of  inference  in  our  passage  through  life. 
Probably  most  of  the  conclusions  we  arrive  at  are 
reached  by  this  route.  Much,  of  course,  is  made  of 
what  is  called  experience;  it  is  properly  rated  high, 
and  held  to  be  the  only  lamp  by  which  any  reasonable 
person  will  be  guided  through  this  dim  contingent 
world.  Yet  it  is  important  to  remember  that  the 
chief  factor  or  element  in  experience  is  the  faculty 
of  drawing  correct  inferences  from  it.  The  things 
that  happen  to  you,  that  fall  under  your  notice,  that 
enter  into  your  life  history,  would  be  of  no  value  at 
all,  would  have  no  didactic  property,  were  it  not  for 
the  reaction  of  your  mind  upon  them,  by  means  of 
which  you  infer  the  future  from  the  present,  and  what 
will  be  from  what  already  has  been,  and  is.  We  are 
continually  talking  about  our  experience  as  though 
that  were  a  finality,  what  we  have  seen  and  suffered 


174  FROM  MAN  TO  GOD 

and  been  part  of,  without  always  reflecting  that  mere 
facts,  happenings,  sensations,  the  impressions  made 
upon  us  by  the  impact  of  external  things  and  events, 
can  only  acquire  significance  and  meaning  from  the 
intellectual  construction  we  put  upon  them.  With- 
out mentality  they  would  be  like  the  grand  spectacle 
of  nature  that  passes  before  the  cattle  feeding  in  the 
meadow,— sunrise  and  sunset,  the  shadows  chasing 
each  other  over  the  hills,  the  pomp  of  clouds,  the  red- 
dening dawn,  the  dusky  twilight,  ''midnight  on  her 
starry  throne."  What  do  the  ox  and  the  sheep  know 
about  the  ''myriad- voiced  organ  of  nature"?  They 
know  as  much  about  it  as  you  would,  if,  back  of  your 
experience,  and  entirely  independent  of  it,  there  were 
not  a  constructive,  interpreting,  illuminating  mind 
capable  of  reacting  upon  what  you  see  and  feel  and 
observe,  and  turning  it  to  practical  account.  This  is 
our  human  distinction.  This  is  really  the  vital  core 
of  our  experience.  It  is  what  a  man  means  when  he 
says,  "my  experience  has  taught  me  thus  and  so"; 
the  fact  being  that  it  has  not  taught  him  anything 
save  as  he  has  taught  himself  out  of  it,  by  collat- 
ing, and  generalizing,  and  concluding  from  its  con- 
tents and  data,  what  he  ought  to  do,  what  he  ought 
to  be,  and  how  he  may  adjust  himself  to  his  situation 
and  use  that  wisdom  which  consists  in  adapting  means 
to  ends.  This  is  what  is  intended  in  the  case  of  an 
incurable  fool,  so  called.  Such  a  one  has  all  the  ex- 
perience, mayhap,  of  Socrates  or  Benjamin  Franklin; 


FROM  MAN  TO  GOD  175 

plenty  in  that  kind  to  keep  him  out  of  blunders  and 
trouble  and  humiliation;  what  he  lacks  is  the  power 
of  reacting  correctly  upon  it,  of  coordinating  and  gen- 
eralizing it,  and  steering  his  course  by  facts  and  con- 
crete actuaHties. 

Experience  taken  by  itself,  simply  as  a  name  for 
what  happens  to  one,  as  a  procession  of  events  that 
files  across  one's  field  of  vision,  as  a  temporal  succes- 
sion of  occurrences,  as  a  set  of  sensations,  sights  and 
sounds,  is  perfectly  sterile  and  meaningless.  Its  total 
value  stands  in  what  one  deduces,  concludes  and  learns 
from  it. 

It  is  easy  to  see,  then,  that  the  field  of  inference  is 
immense.  We  know  very  Httle  absolutely,  but  we  be- 
lieve a  great  deal;  that  is  to  say,  we  infer  from  the 
little  that  we  do  strictly  know,  to  more  beyond. 
Pretty  much  our  whole  life  is  guided  by  probability,  by 
behef ,  by  what  we  call  moral  certainty.  You  are  mor- 
ally certain  of  a  thing  when  you  are  sure  enough  to 
act  upon  your  impression  or  information ;  it  is  not  ab- 
solute certainty,  or  complete  presentative  knowledge, 
it  is  paler  and  thinner  than  these,  but  it  is  sufficient 
to  go  upon,  to  justify  action.  And  our  human  Kves 
are,  for  the  most  part,  governed  and  directed  by  the 
candlehght  of  inference,  of  moral  certainty,  of  proba- 
bility, and  not  by  absolute  and  perfect  knowledge. 

There  are  many  who  name  themselves  agnostics,  no- 
tably in  relation  to  religious  ideas  and  metaphysical 
truths,  but,  I  suppose  everyone  is,  of  necessity,  an 


176  FROM  MAN  TO  GOD 

agnostic,  to  this  extent,  that  he  would  not  attempt  a 
strict  demonstration  of  scarce  any  Christian  doctrine  or 
of  any  article  of  what  is  called  revealed  religion.  The 
most  earnest  and  convinced  theist  would  not  probably 
succeed  in  proving  even  the  existence  of  the  living 
God.  The  devoutest  Christian  could  not  demonstrate 
that  an  incarnation  of  the  divine  and  eternal  has 
taken  place  in  the  person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  The 
right  question  is  not  what  we  know  or  do  not  know, 
but  what  we  believe,  what  we  are  morally  certain  of, 
i.  e.,  sufficiently  certain  to  act  upon,  to  bear  our  weight 
upon,  and  trust  and  use  for  practical  purposes.  These 
words  of  the  Psalmist  corroborate  this  position:  ''He 
who  planted  the  ear,  shall  he  not  hear?  He  who  formed 
the  eye,  shall  he  not  see?"  There  is  no  irrefragable 
chain  of  proof,  nothing  that  has  mathematical  strin- 
gency, nothing  that  the  lawyer  might  not  throw  out 
of  court  as  irrelevant,  nothing  that  compels  belief 
in  a  personal  God  and  in  His  providence  and  care ; 
nevertheless,  there  is  prodigious  force  in  the  argu- 
ment, it  is  a  highly  pertinent  consideration. 

Here  is  man,  the  primate  and  paragon  of  animals, 
with  his  senses  and  intellect,  his  thoughts  that  wander 
through  eternity,  and  his  endless  aspirations  and  inex- 
tinguishable hopes.  If  man  has  a  seeing  eye  and  a  hear- 
ing ear,  if  he  is  percipient  and  rational  and  intellectual, 
can  he  think  less  of  his  Maker?  Is  it  reasonable  to  sup- 
pose or  believe  that  there  is  more  in  the  effect  than  lay 
originally  and  implicitly  in  the  cause?    The  argument 


FROM  MAN  TO  GOD  177 

is  extremely  cogent;  not  a  plenary  argument,  not  con- 
clusive as  to  the  existence  of  a  personal  God,  yet  one 
that  arrests  attention  and  calls  loudly  for  an  answer, 
and  which  one  would  find  some  difficulty  in  refuting. 

Indeed  the  method  taken  by  this  biblical  writer  is  the 
only  one  by  which  it  is  possible  to  get  satisfaction  in 
reference  to  some  of  the  ultimate  questions  of  thought ; 
nor  ought  it  to  be  pronounced  invalid  and  insufficient 
in  the  sphere  of  religious  inquiry,  when,  as  matter  of 
fact,  we  have  to  invoke  and  apply  it  constantly  in 
other  connections.  How  do  I  know  that  you  or  any 
man  with  whom  I  converse  is  a  reasonable  soul?  I 
never  saw  a  soul;  it  is  strictly  true  that  I  do  not  see 
you,  nor  you  me.  All  we  can  see  are  practical  mani- 
festations and  sensible  signs;  the  rest  is  inference. 
We  judge  of  others  by  what  we  know  of  ourselves. 
How  do  men  collect  a  verdict  from  a  line  of  evidence? 
They  infer  the  truth  of  fact  from  the  total  impression 
made  upon  them  by  the  mass  of  conflicting  testimony. 
It  is  clear  that  we  are  quite  familiar  with  the  canon  or 
rule  propounded  in  this  text:  ''He  who  planted  the 
ear,  shall  he  not  hear?  He  that  teacheth  man  knowl- 
edge, shall  he  not  know?" 

No    one    need    object    to    carry   this    inferential 

method    into    the   realm   of   religion,   since   we   are 

straitly    shut    up   to    it    in    other    departments    of 

thought.     We  look  out  upon  the  universe  from  our 

far  little  isle  afloat  on  vacancy,  and  we  detect  order, 

balance,     system,     adaptation,     mathematics — what 
12 


178  FROM  MAN  TO  GOD 

looks  like  purpose  in  the  vast  fabric;  there  seems  to  be 
a  mind — somewhat  akin  to  our  own — immanent  in  it. 
It  is  a  spiritual  universe.  We  can  understand  it  in 
large  part.  By  consequence,  it  is  a  fair  inference 
that  a  designing  intelHgence  adequate  to  the  product 
is  responsible  for  it. 

This  surely  is  a  critically  interesting  subject. 
What  are  we  entitled  to  believe  concerning  the 
eternal  problems,  God,  the  world,  the  soul — what 
may  we  be  morally  certain  of,  that  is,  certain 
enough  to  act  upon,  to  take  for  granted  as  true? 
Although  we  may  not  know  or  be  able  to  demonstrate, 
is  there  not  enough  at  our  disposal  to  ground  some 
practical  conclusions  on,  to  control  our  conduct,  and 
direct  our  lives?  This  is  virtually  the  argument  of 
the  text:  it  rises  from  man  to  God:  it  assumes  that 
man  and  his  world  require  a  cause  and  an  author  not 
lower  than  themselves,  but  higher,  more  powerful  and 
more  divine. 

People  continually  object:  ''We  do  not  know 
anything  about  religion;  we  do  not  even  know  that 
there  is  a  personal  Providence  over  the  world;  we 
have  not  the  means  to  verify  any  reKgious  idea  or 
hope.  All  these  highest  things  are  involved  in  a  cloud 
of  doubt;  we  must  be  agnostic  in  respect  to  them." 
Now,  while  it  is  certainly  true  that  the  nature  of 
religious  inquiry  precludes  the  use  of  the  surveyor's 
theodoHte  and  measuring  chain,  or  of  the  chemist's 
scales  and  solvents,  or  of  the  lawyer's  stringent  rules 


FROM  MAN  TO  GOD  179 

of  evidence,  it  is  not  true  that  the  world  and  our  Hfe 
here  do  not  yield  a  presumption  in  favor  of  religious 
faith  and  of  righteous  living.  There  are,  at  least,  a 
few  supreme  verities  that  men  have  a  right  to  assume 
and  to  act  upon,  growing  out  of  their  own  constitu- 
tion and  condition.  It  is  an  egregious  mistake  to 
always  insist  upon  knowledge  and  proof.  These  are 
not  available  even  in  matters  of  secular  concern  and 
in  daily  emergencies.  We  have  to  walk  by  the  light 
we  have,  and  mostly  through  the  dark ;  we  sail  through 
a  fog,  we  are  liable  to  strike  rock  or  shoal  any  day. 
We  must  be  guided  by  probabilities  and  take  our 
chances.  So,  likewise,  there  are  a  few  religious  truths 
which  any  man  is  justified  in  believing,  upon  the 
ground  of  his  own  nature  and  experience.  He  need 
not  attempt  to  prove  them,  they  are  not  susceptible 
of  that  treatment ;  but  he  is  safer  in  acting  upon  them 
than  in  denying  or  ignoring  them.  One  of  these  is 
that  God,  like  himself,  is  a  person,  who  can  under- 
stand him  and  sympathize  with  him,  who  can  hear 
his  groans  and  sighs  and  prayers  and  interpret  and 
answer  them  in  such  wise  as  to  promote  his  best  wel- 
fare. Man  cannot  conceive  of  anything  in  the  uni- 
verse higher  than  personahty ;  this  is  the  loftiest  note 
he  can  strike.  He  discovers  that  he  himself  is  com- 
pounded of  intelligence,  feeling  and  w^ll;  hence,  if 
he  can  think  of  God  at  all,  it  is  natural  and  unavoid- 
able that  he  should  make  over  to  Deity  his  own  most 
regal  attribute,  his  finest  faculties,  though  these  are 


i8o  FROM  MAN  TO  GOD 

but  a  candle  glimmer  and  pallid  ray,  compared  to 
their  energy  and  amplitude  and  perfection  in  God, 
who  alone  has  life.  This  is  theism,  and  it  is  grounded 
in  human  nature.  ''He  that  planted  the  ear,  shall  he 
not  hear?  He  that  teacheth  man  knowledge,  shall  not 
he  know?" 

Moreover,  any  mortal  man  is  safer  and  happier  in 
casting  himself  without  reserve  upon  this  assumption, 
than  by  taking  up  with  blank  atheism,  or  fatalistic 
pantheism,  or  even  negative  agnosticism.  He  has 
the  warrant  of  his  nature  and  constitution  to  go  upon ; 
he  is  encouraged  to  believe — poor,  frail,  frightened, 
dying  creature  that  he  is— that  there  is  One  in  the 
universe  who  really  loves  him,  listens  to  his  cry  and 
can  save  him  and  provide  for  him,  here  and  hereafter. 

Another  idea  or  doctrine  about  which  we  may  be 
sure  enough  to  act  upon,  is,  that  God  has  made  a  par- 
tial self-revelation  to  mankind.  This  inference  almost 
inevitably  follows  upon  that  of  the  divine  existence 
and  paternity.  If  man  is  indeed  a  son  of  God  and 
capable  of  moral  ideas  and  religious  emotions  and 
yearnings,  capable  of  communion  with  conceptions 
and  hopes  that  transcend  this  material  world  of  sense, 
then  it  is  quite  thinkable  that,  owing  to  the  kinship 
between  them,  the  infinite  Spirit  has  actually  come 
into  communication  with  a  creature  so  constituted 
as  to  understand  Him,  at  least  in  part.  This  makes 
room  for  all  the  solemn  revelations  that  have  been 
vouchsafed  in  every  age  to  elect  souls  of  our  race — 


FROM  MAN  TO  GOD  i8i 

idealists,  saints,  mystics,  prophets,  religious  thinkers; 
and,  last  of  all,  it  makes  such  an  incarnation  of  the 
invisible  God  as  Christianity  postulates  and  presents 
entirely  possible,  if  not  even  probable.  Given  an 
infinite  Reason,  and  a  finite  reason  that  can  partially 
comprehend  Him  and  His  ways,  and  the  antecedent 
likelihood  is  that  the  two  will  approximate  and  enter 
into  reciprocal  relations.  And  this  is  what  the 
Christian  gospel  declares  has  taken  place :  it  purports 
to  be  a  genuine  self -discovery  of  God  to  His  human 
family.  Again  I  remind  you  there  is  no  proof  possible. 
You  cannot  prove  a  divine  incarnation,  or,  for  that 
matter,  any  article  of  the  Christian  rehgion.  Never- 
theless, taking  the  whole  case  together,  there  is  quite 
enough  to  act  upon.  Considering  man,  a  sinful,  dy- 
ing creature  full  of  mysterious  hungers  and  thirsts, 
who  wants  to  be  saved,  to  be  eternally  blest,  and  who 
can  think  about  God  and  His  perfections,  and  the 
pleasures  at  His  right  hand,  it  is  not  incredible  to  sup- 
pose that  the  Christian  revelation  is  an  authentic, 
articulate  promise  to  him  that  his  wish  shall  be  grati- 
fied. No  one,  surely,  need  be  ashamed  to  confess 
Christ,  to  become  His  disciple,  to  follow  Him,  to  trust 
Him  as  the  mediator  whom  God  has  ordained,  and  to 
live  the  filial  Hfe  which  He  lived.  There  is  enough 
in  our  circumstances,  in  human  condition,  in  man's 
estate  of  sin  and  misery,  in  his  anxieties,  aspirations, 
discontent,  in  his  conscious  guilt  and  fear  of  death, 
judgment  and  eternity,  in  his  longing  for  rest  and 


i82  FROM  MAN  TO  GOD 

peace  and  happiness,  there  is  enough  in  man's  sorry 
case  to  make  the  gospel  welcome,  to  make  it  an  issue 
that  ought  to  be  acted  upon. 

I  would  mention  one  other  religious  idea  or  truth, — 
that  of  the  soul's  conscious  survival  into  a  higher  life, 
into  a  superior  mode  of  existence — what  is  commonly 
called  immortality.  In  respect  to  this,  inferential 
reasoning  plays  a  large  part.  The  question  is:  Has 
such  a  delicate,  marvelous  creature  as  man  been 
brought  so  far,  to  go  no  farther?  Does  it  not  look  like 
a  wasteful  excess  to  fit  up  a  being  with  such  fine 
furniture  of  abstract  ideas,  spiritual  sentiments,  great 
expectations,  insatiable  cravings,  one  who  can  build 
metaphysical  constructions  and  speculative  systems 
of  thought,  or,  if  not  that, — save  in  exceptional  in- 
stances,— who  yet  is  profoundly  conscious  of  the  hol- 
lowness  and  futility  of  present  satisfactions,  and  whose 
prophetic  soul  dreams  of  something  better  and  more 
permanent,  and  then  disappoint  him?  Is  it  not 
almost  cruel  to  launch  such  a  singular  and  gifted  crea- 
ture upon  life,  to  do  so  much  for  him,  to  bring  such 
spacious,  splendid  prospects  before  his  eager  eye,  to 
whisper  into  his  ear  such  rumors,  surmises  and  possi- 
bilities, and  at  last  snuff  him  out  like  the  guttering 
candle  that  expires  in  final  darkness? 

Whatever  anyone  may  be  disposed  to  think  or  to 
say  about  all  this,  there  can  be  no  question  that  the  con- 
fessed failure  of  this  earthly  life,  its  abrupt  inequalities 
and  crushing  disappointments,  its  broken  purposes  and 


FROM  MAN  TO  GOD  183 

small  results,  have  grounded  an  argument  in  favor  of  a 
future  state  that  will  supply  a  solution  for  what  is 
now  unintelligible,  and  will  vindicate  the  essential  jus- 
tice of  God.     Perhaps  this  coming  adjustment  is  what 
Christ  hinted  at  in  His  parable,  Dives  and  Lazarus. 
He  figures  Abraham  addressing  Dives  thus:   '^Son,  re- 
member that  thou  in  thy  lifetime  receivedest  thy  good 
things  and  Lazarus  evil  things,  but  now  he  is  com- 
forted and  thou  art  tormented."     It  seems  to  mean, 
taken  in  a  large  way,  that  things  are  to  be  equated 
eventually,  and  that  under  that  equilibrating  process 
it  may  turn  out  that  the  last  shall  be  first,  the  first 
last.     God  will  redress  the  disturbed  balance,   and 
every  accountable  soul  will  be  put  where  he  belongs, 
and  get  what  he  deserves.     This  is  conspicuously  not 
true  under  present  mundane  arrangements,  but  the 
long  and  patient  justice  of  God  will  finally  make  it 
true,  and  show  it  to  be  one  of  the  pillars  of  His  awful 
throne.     Probably  something  like  this  is  what  Christ 
meant  to  say.     Yet  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the 
doctrine  of  a  future  state  rests  largely  upon  inference 
from  extant  conditions  and  the  notorious  failure  of 
man's  terrestrial  experience  to  satisfy  his  moral  in- 
stincts.    Hence,  earnest  thinkers  feel  that  if  this  be 
all,  and  there  is  no  further  explanation,  the  world  is 
not  worthy  of  such  a  being  as  they  conceive  God  to  be, 
and  life  hardly  worth  the  living.     You  see  that  the 
argument  of  the  Psalmist  is  a  standing,  perennial  one, 
has  not  been  vacated  by  time,  has  not  become  obsolete 
or  uncouth,  is  good  and  current  and  necessary  to-day. 


i84  FROM  MAN  TO  GOD 

*'He  that  planted  the  ear,  shall  he  not  hear?  He  that 
teacheth  man  knowledge,  shall  not  he  know?" 

I  commend  this  method  to  you,  in  the  conduct  of 
life  and  in  handling  the  sublime  mysteries  of  religion. 
We  walk  by  faith,  not  by  sight.  Carry  this  invaluable 
instrument  of  inference  with  you  as  you  move  on 
through  the  world;  especially  take  it  into  the  cloudy 
region  of  religious  truth,  and  use  it  as  the  mariner 
does  his  compass  in  fog  or  storm,  when  he  cannot  get 
an  observation  from  the  sun.  You  are  fully  warranted 
to  do  this;  indeed,  it  is  all  you  can  do,  much  of  the  time. 

Look  out  upon  the  segment  of  the  universe  that 
you  see;  look  at  this  sad  world  staggering  under 
its  load  of  sin  and  sorrow,  pain  and  labor  and 
grinding  care;  look  at  man,  so  small  and  mean,  yet 
so  darkly  great,  so  potential  and  prophetic;  look 
at  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  your  own  life,  what  few 
nuggets  of  gold  in  the  pile  of  ashes  and  orts  and  ends 
you  have  scraped  together;  compare  what  you  have 
and  are,  with  what  you  covet  and  aspire  after;  con- 
trast your  ambitions  with  your  performances  and 
present  plight;  remember  your  private  anxieties, 
doubts  and  fears  and  fluttering  hopes  and  conscious 
weakness  and  sinfulness;  take  the  whole  case  to- 
gether— yourself,  your  race,  the  family  of  man  dwell- 
ing amid  such  a  wondrous,  solemn,  inexplicable  scene 
as  this — ^and  judge,  conclude,  infer,  from  it  all,  whether 
the  gospel  of  the  Son  of  God— His  teachings,  promises, 
cross  and  resurrection — is  not  what  you  need,  what  the 
world  wants,  to  give  peace,  contentment,  and  hope. 


A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON 

Then  said  he  unto  them,  Therefore  every  scribe  which  is 
instructed  tmto  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  man  that 
is  a  householder ,  which  hringeth  forth  out  of  his  treasure 
things  new  and  old. — Matthew  13  :  52. 

fk  FTER  delivering  in  rapid  succession  a  chain  of 
/_%  parables,  Jesus,  reports  the  Evangelist,  turned 
X  -A.  to  His  disciples  and  asked  them  whether 
they  understood  what  He  had  been  saying.  They 
promptly  replied  in  the  affirmative,  speaking,  of 
course,  from  their  standpoint.  Doubtless  they  under- 
stood the  words  and  their  surface  sense,  but  not  the 
deeper  implications  and  the  wealth  of  meaning  which 
time  would  find  in  them  and  bring  out  of  them.  It 
is  not  likely  that  these  men,  who  had  got  what  re- 
ligious knowledge  they  had  from  the  synagogue  and 
the  rubrics  of  Judaism,  fully  appreciated  and  duly 
estimated  all  that  was  involved  in  the  teaching  of  their 
great  Master.  So  that,  although  they  beHeved  they 
understood  Him,  this  their  affirmation  suffers  a  serious 
discount  owing  to  their  ignorance  and  inexperience, 
and  their  inability  to  forecast  the  future,  its  histories 
and  the  confirmations  it  would  supply. 

There  are,  obviously,  different  degrees  of  under- 
standing anything,  depending  upon  the  mental  capac- 

185 


i86  A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON 

ity,  training  and  traditions  in  which  a  man  has  been 
bred,  and  the  circles  of  ideas  and  interests  among  which 
he  has  moved  and  which  are  familiar  to  him.  Hence 
he  may  think  that  he  understands  a  matter,  when,  in 
fact,  all  he  knows  of  it  is  a  stream  of  words,  for  the 
reason  that  he  has  not  the  intellectual  qualifications 
and  perceptions  necessary  to  a  real  and  sympathetic 
appreciation  of  it. 

Jesus  did  not  question  upon  this  occasion  the  stout 
assertion  of  His  disciples  that  they  comprehended  His 
parables  and  had  extracted  from  them  all  that  they 
carried,  and  that  lay  implicit  in  them.  He  merely 
suggested  that  new  meanings  and  applications  might 
be  developed  from  His  sayings  with  the  lapse  of  time 
and  as  the  experience  and  knowledge  of  his  followers 
increased.  This  truth  He  also  set  in  the  frame  of  a 
little  parable,  likening  them  to  housekeepers  who  had 
accumulated,  in  the  course  of  years,  a  large  collection 
of  various  things,  old  and  new.  By  the  old.  He  in- 
tended their  present  and  relatively  imperfect  under- 
standing of  His  ideas  and  expectations;  and  by  the 
new,  the  higher  interpretations  and  larger  meanings 
and  the  more  occult  sense  which  they  would  find  in  His 
instructions  as  these  were  illuminated  and  corroborated 
by  events  and  by  the  advancing  destinies  of  the  world. 
Christ  evidently  throws  out  a  hint  that  even  His  be- 
loved disciples  had  not  a  vital  hold  upon  the  immense 
truths  and  hopes  He  announced.  They  too,  like  the 
Jewish  populace,  did  not  comprehend  the  genius  of  His 


A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON  187 

gospel,  its  profound  significance,  its  perspective  of 
centuries  and  all  the  bearings  and  issues  that  lay 
latent  therein.  These  would  emerge  only  gradually 
and  upon  occasion,  as  the  world  would  be  ready  to 
receive  them  and  able  to  use  them.  And  this,  which 
He  knew  would  be  the  experience  of  His  disciples. 
He  foreshadows  under  the  similitude  of  a  prudent 
housekeeper,  who,  to  provide  against  possible  con- 
tingencies, has  storeroom  and  cellars  where  he  gathers 
articles  and  implements  of  all  descriptions,  arranging 
and  classifying  them,  putting  this  on  a  shelf,  that  in  a 
chest,  hanging  something  else  on  a  peg  or  nail,  destroy- 
ing or  casting  away  nothing  which  he  imagines  may 
some  day  be  of  use  and  repay  him  for  having  given 
it  houseroom.  The  whirligig  of  time  may  easily 
bring  it  about  that  he  shall  wish  he  had  kept  some 
piece,  even  though  antiquated  and  out  of  date.  So, 
by  one  windfall  and  another,  he  has  got  together  a 
wide  variety  of  things,  both  old  and  new. 

Now,  it  is  to  such  a  forelooking,  prudential  person 
that  Christ  likens  His  disciples — in  that  and  in  every 
age.  ''Every  scribe  who  hath  been  made  a  disciple  to 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  is  like  unto  a  man  that  is  a 
householder,  who  bringeth  forth  out  of  his  treasure 
things  new  and  old . "  One  may  see  here  a  covert  thrust 
at  the  scribes  of  the  Jewish  church  as  contrasted  with  a 
scribe  who  has  been  made  a  disciple  to  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  They  were,  in  the  opinion  of  Christ,  not  of  the 
same  kind.   Nothing  new,  no  fresh  interpretation,  came 


i88  A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON 

from  the  Jewish  scribes.  What  they  taught  was  old, 
stereotyped,  traditional,  had  no  relation  to  the  spir- 
itual aspirations  of  living  men.  They  were  experts 
in  microscopic  distinctions  and  in  hanging  heavy 
weights  on  thin  wires.  They  insisted  largely  upon 
punctilios  and  petty  externahties  and  ritual  observ- 
ances, and  had  no  food  for  man's  hunger,  no  balm 
for  his  hurt.  But  Jesus  here  broadly  hints  that 
there  is  to  be  a  new  order  of  scribes,  instructed  and 
made  disciples  unto  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  The 
old  Une  was  fast  running  out,  and  would  soon  give 
place  to  another  school  which  He  proposed  to  found, 
a  school  whose  members  would  resemble  the  clear- 
sighted housekeeper  and  would  be  able  to  adapt  them- 
selves to  a  new  world  that  was  coming,  and  meet 
its  demands.  This  new  order  of  scribes  would  speak 
to  the  condition  of  men,  they  would  serve  their  own 
age,  they  would  bring  forth  out  of  their  storerooms 
the  new  as  well  as  the  old,  the  old  as  well  as  the  new, 
depending  upon  what  was  needed. 

The  thought  that  underlies  this  illustration  is  quite 
obvious.  Their  Master  meant  those  disciples  to 
expect  that  the  result  of  observation  and  reflection, 
the  actual  experience  of  life,  and  especially  the 
illuminating  action  of  the  infinite  Spirit  making  them 
of  quicker  apprehension  and  more  hospitable  to  new 
truth,  would  gradually  shift  their  viewpoint,  set 
them  on  a  vantage  ground  and  enrich  them  with 
acquisitions  and  ability  to  instruct,  comfort  and  edify 


A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON  189 

men.  Ideas  and  doctrines  that  now  baffled  them 
would  then  lie  sunlit  and  clear;  with  the  growing  years 
their  convictions  would  take  deeper  root;  rehgious 
truths  would  fall  into  their  proper  place  and  order. 
They  would  collect,  through  a  lapse  of  time,  not  odds 
and  ends, — little  trifles  that  might  some  day  come 
into  request, — but  behefs,  persuasions,  insights,  that 
would  be  of  incalculable  value,  and  put  them  upon 
an  equality  with  their  circumstances  and  the  oc- 
casion. 

If  this  be  a  correct  rendering  of  the  mind  of  Christ  in 
this  remark  to  His  disciples,  it  clearly  implies  that  the 
years  as  they  come,  should,  if  wisely  utilized,  sensibly 
increase  religious  knowledge  and  faith,  and  make  one 
progressively  more  competent  to  handle  the  problems 
and  contradictions  of  life  and  to  meet  its  exigencies  in  a 
victorious  manner.  Just  as  the  provident  housekeeper 
found  every  little  while  that  some  things  he  had  saved 
and  stored  in  his  lumber  room  were  exactly  what  he 
needed  to  meet  a  call,  or  supply  a  deficiency,  or  mend 
a  rent,  or  take  the  place  of  something  that  had  been 
lost  or  broken,  so  by  analogy  in  the  religious  kingdom, 
it  is  perfectly  possible  to  accumulate  resources,  powers, 
qualities,  convictions,  mental  habitudes,  which  shall 
stand  one  in  good  stead  in  the  hour  of  need,  in 
doubt,  in  adversity,  in  trial. 

This  similitude,  and  little  parable  of  Jesus,  is  evi- 
dently an  apt  one,  and  strikingly  descriptive  of  what 
may  take  place  in  the  sphere  of  religious  experience. 


ipo  A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON 

And,  as  matter  of  fact,  it  was  abundantly  fulfilled  in 
the  history  of  those  Apostles  in  whose  hearing  He  first 
uttered  it.  They  found  it  to  be  as  He  here  predicted, 
for,  after  the  Ascension  of  their  Master,  they  under- 
stood His  gospel  as  they  had  not  done  while  He  was 
with  them.  They  perceived  that  it  had  connections, 
relations,  ramifications  they  had  not  suspected.  Vis- 
tas were  opened  out,  horizons  were  rolled  back,  new 
prospects  and  hopes  sprang  up  and  the  gospel  took 
hold  of  them  as  a  redeeming,  comforting,  sanctifying 
power,  enabling  them  for  all  they  were  called  upon  to 
do  or  to  suffer. 

This  idea  then  of  the  old  and  the  new  is  forcibly 
brought  to  mind  by  the  flight  of  years  and  the  ever- 
changing  conditions  and  environments  they  bring 
with  them.  It  is  of  these  two  elements,  in  fact, 
that  our  present  life  is  constituted.  The  new  lies 
potentially  in  the  old,  and  the  old  foreshadows  and 
makes  possible  the  new.  They  hang  together  and 
there  ought  to  be  no  schism  between  them.  If  the 
new  is  deduced  from  the  old  by  legitimate  process, 
and  grows  out  of  it  as  the  plant  from  the  seed,  or  if 
it  is  necessitated  by  the  logic  of  events,  or  by  force 
of  circumstances,  this  is  akin  to  the  sequences  that 
take  place  in  the  realm  of  physics.  It  is  a  case  of  strict 
antecedent  and  consequent,  for  it  is  inevitable  that 
the  old,  if  it  has  any  vitality,  any  seed  of  hfe,  should 
reach  out  into  new  developments  and  adapt  itself 
to  changing  times  and  conditions:  only  so  can  it  save 


A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON  191 

itself  from  being  shunted  and  sidetracked.  If  it 
would  live  over  into  a  fruitful  future,  this  can  only  be 
by  virtue  of  a  large,  fluid,  flexible  nature  or  property 
that  lends  itself  readily  to  some  reincarnation  or 
restatement  of  its  essential,  underlying  principle  or 
law.  It  is  well  to  keep  this  important  distinction  in 
view,  that  there  is  a  vital  coherence  and  historic  con- 
tinuity between  the  old  and  the  new,  and  that  when 
properly  managed  there  is  an  easy,  imperceptible, 
natural  evolution  of  the  one  into  the  other.  Unques- 
tionably times  change;  new  issues,  new  crises,  new 
perils,  new  opportunities,  arrive  from  age  to  age,  and 
the  problem  always  is,  to  adjust  the  eternal  law,  ideal, 
truth, — the  eternal  right, — to  the  concrete  case  or  prac- 
tical difficulty,  be  it  ever  so  novel  or  unprecedented. 
It  is  confessedly  at  this  juncture  that  men  are  likely 
to  botch  and  bungle;  they  often  move  too  fast,  they 
precipitate  events,  they  push  things,  they  are  pre- 
mature, and  in  the  end  are  liable  to  be  rebuked  by 
some  condition  brought  about  by  their  wild,  reckless 
haste,  lust  of  innovation,  iconoclastic  zeal,  and  unwar- 
ranted faith  in  their  nostrum  to  cure  the  ills  of  the 
world.  Yet  this  need  not  be  so.  The  old  and  ever- 
lasting truths  have  a  latency  and  depth  in  them  that 
no  age  can  exhaust;  they  are  perennial,  resourceful, 
imperishable,  indefeasible,  and  can  never  become 
uncouth  or  outworn.  Moreover,  there  is  always 
more  of  the  old  in  the  world  of  any  time  than  of  the 
new.     If  the  old  things  were  abolished  outright,  the 


192  A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON 

foundations  would  be  destroyed,  the  taproots  would 
be  cut.  Scrutinize  any  fact  or  event  narrowly,  and 
it  will  appear  that  it  is  little  more  than  a  transforma- 
tion or  recombination  of  elements  already  familiar. 
If  this  were  not  so,  the  new  thing  would  be  a  startling 
phenomenon  cut  off  from  all  that  could  explain  it. 
Its  only  chance  lies  in  what  it  holds  of  the  old,  the 
universal,  the  traditional.  So  that  there  is  nothing 
absolutely  new,  as  the  author  of  the  tract  Ecclesiastes 
discovered  in  his  day.  The  old  is  indispensable  to 
keep  the  new  alive.  In  every  age,  howsoever  pro- 
gressive, in  every  era  of  revolution  and  change,  there 
is,  of  necessity,  a  large  deposit  from  the  past;  the 
collective  experience  of  the  race,  catholic  consent 
touching  fundamental  truths,  settlements,  finalities, 
some  mighty  landmarks  are  presupposed  in  every 
new  departure,  in  every  new  time.  We  may  carry 
these  categories  of  old  and  new  with  us  everywhere, 
and  it  will  develop  that  every  present  has  historical 
roots  in  the  past,  builds  upon  it,  adds  only  a  small 
increment,  a  trifling  deviation  or  distinction,  while 
the  great  systems,  creeds,  establishments,  doctrines, 
achievements,  which  make  the  new  time  or  improved 
state  of  things  possible,  have  already  been,  of  old. 
Here  we  stand  fronting  the  last  year  of  this  first  dec- 
ade of  the  twentieth  century.  We  call  it  a  new  year; 
but  how  new?  Is  it  not  plain  that  it  will  be  the  same 
old  year  with  a  few  slight  modifications;  the  same  old 
story  with  a  few  surprises,  grateful  or  otherwise,  a 


A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON  193 

few  unexpected  joys  or  unlooked-for  sorrows;  the 
same  round  of  work,  of  care,  of  vexation  and  suspense, 
of  success  and  failure,  of  pleasures  and  pains?  In 
what  sense  is  it  new?  Is  it  not  merely  a  small  frac- 
tion of  that  infinite  duration  which  we  call  time? 
And  how  old  is  time?  And  how  old  is  man?  Who 
can  compute  their  age?  What  archaeologist,  geologist, 
historian,  can  tell  us  accurately  about  either?  It  is 
quite  obvious  to  reflection  that  the  new  year  will 
carry  along  with  it  more  out  of  the  old  years  that  are 
fled  than  it  will  contribute  of  positive  and  surpris- 
ing novelty,  abrupt  change  or  startling  innovation. 
Something  either  of  good  or  evil  may  easily  happen  in 
the  course  of  it  that  will  differentiate  it  from  all  others 
within  your  experience,  and  set  it  apart  by  itself  as 
immemorial.  But  even  so,  nothing  can  befall  that  has 
not  happened  to  others  in  the  foretime,  and  cast  its 
shadow  upon  other  hearts  or  filled  them  with  an 
exuberant  joy.  This  was  probably  in  the  mind  of 
St.  Paul  when  he  wrote  to  the  Corinthian  Christians, 
''No  temptation  hath  taken  you  but  such  as  is  com- 
mon to  man."  He  would  not  have  them  think  that 
they  had  been  set  up  as  targets  for  the  Almighty  to 
shoot  at,  and  that  no  human  beings  had  ever  suffered 
as  they  had.  So  that,  looked  into  carefully,  these 
recurring  new  years  are  such  in  name  rather  than  in 
fact.  Whatever  may  turn  out  to  be  new  in  them  has 
often  happened  before  in  other  connections,  and  in  the 
experience  of  those  who  have  walked  the  way  of  nature 
13 


194  A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON 

before  us.  Joy  and  sorrow,  birth  and  death,  gain  and 
loss,  poverty  and  wealth,  happiness  and  adversity, 
these  have  been  fixtures  of  the  world  from  the  be- 
ginning— there  is  nothing  new  in  them;  the  setting, 
the  circumstances,  the  incidence,  those  upon  whom 
they  fall — these  elements  of  the  case  necessarily  vary, 
but  the  content  of  any  new  year  is  practically  the 
reproduction  under  slightly  different  forms,  of  events 
and  experiences  as  old  as  man. 

Yet  while  it  is  indisputably  true  that  there  is  noth- 
ing new  under  the  sun,  it  is  also  true  and  important 
that  the  future  is  to  us  an  unexplored,  undiscovered 
tract,  and  that  to  traverse  it  and  meet  its  situations 
and  emergencies  we  shall  find,  like  the  wise  house- 
holder of  the  parable,  that  our  stores  of  knowledge  and 
experience,  our  moral  convictions,  our  religious  beliefs, 
all  that  we  have  gathered  on  our  life  pilgrimage,  will 
likely  be  required  and  come  into  play.  Man  is  the 
only  creature  of  God  we  know  of  capable  of  moral 
experience,  of  laying  up  treasures  of  facts,  memories, 
observations,  informations,  convictions,  inductions 
and  inferences,  by  the  light  of  which  he  may  move 
on  into  the  unknown  and  untried.  Nor,  indeed,  is 
life  of  much  profit  to  anyone,  save  as  he  accumulates 
competence  to  meet  its  developments  and  dilemmas. 
This,  after  all,  is  the  great  achievement,  the  victory 
that  overcomes  the  world.  It  is  not  a  matter  of 
cardinal  importance  where  one  resides,  what  material 
or  element  he  works  in,  what  his  line  of  activity  or  his 


A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON  195 

fame  and  eminence  in  it,  but  rather,  whether  out  of 
life  and  its  complex  of  experience,  its  vicissitudes  and 
alternations,  its  successes  and  failures,  its  triumphs 
and  disappointments,  he  has  derived  strength,  steadi- 
ness, a  larger  hope,  a  deeper  trust  in  the  divine  Provi- 
dence, power  to  live  and  reign  as  do  the  sons  of  God. 

The  true  life  is  the  Hfe  of  the  soul,  and  its  increasing 
aptitude  and  ability  to  cope  with  the  combinations 
that  confront  it,  and  the  oppositions  that  threaten  its 
peace.  It  is  not  the  ephemeral  things  we  collect 
by  dabbling  in  the  mud  and  quicksand  of  this  sinking 
world  that  constitute  life  in  the  highest  acceptation, 
but  what  we  have  learned  from  the  solemn  shifts  and 
dispensations  of  our  experience,  the  moral  power  they 
have  imparted,  the  religious  sense  they  have  awakened, 
the  disposition  and  character  they  have  created.  This 
is  the  thought  that  underlies  Christ's  parable  of  the 
prudent  housekeeper.  Such  a  one  has  accumulated 
so  large  and  multifarious  a  stock  of  solid,  important, 
available,  comfortable  truths,  principles,  conclusions, 
out  of  the  hurry  and  foam  of  existence,  out  of  its  toil 
and  tragedy,  that  by  means  of  them  he  can  accommo- 
date himself  to  whatever  happens,  he  can  shout  with 
Paul,  "Nay,  in  all  these  things  we  are  more  than 
conquerors." 

Let  us  then  try  to  attain  a  right  definition  of  what  it 
is  to  live,  now  that  we  stand  on  the  threshold  of  another 
year.  We  ought  to  be  able  to  find  something  in  the 
old  gospel  and  something  in  our  garnered  experience 


196  A  NEW  YEAR  SERMON 

that  will  help  us  to  meet  the  future,  whatever  burden 
or  trouble,  whatever  perplexity,  question  of  casuistry 
and  conscience,  whatever  dejection  and  disappoint- 
ment it  may  bring,  or  wherever  it  may  cast  our  lot. 
Something  old  and  new  we  should  find  among  our 
spiritual  stores  germane  to  any  situation,  and  that  will 
fit  in  with  it.  Are  you  the  wise  householder  of  the 
parable?  Have  you  laid  up  any  sound  maxims,  pro- 
found persuasions  and  religious  certainties?  We 
must  live,  if  at  all,  from  within,  by  the  power  of  faith, 
of  hope,  of  love,  by  inward  joys  and  assurances,  by 
the  things  new  and  old  we  can  bring  out  of  our  treasure. 


LIFE  IMMORTAL 

JUNE  19,  1910 

Notwithstanding  in  this  rejoice  not,  that  the  spirits  are  subject 
unto  you;  but  rather  rejoice,  because  your  names  are  written 
in  heaven. — Luke  10  :  20. 

TOWARD  the  close  of  Christ's  ministry,  sev- 
enty men  were  sent  out  through  Judea  to 
announce  the  imminence  of  Messiah's  king- 
dom. Jesus  appears  to  have  appointed  two  missions, 
that  of  the  twelve  and  that  of  the  seventy,  but  the  lat- 
ter seems  to  have  been  for  a  special  emergency,  while 
the  former  was  a  permanent  body,  to  last  for  the  term 
of  life.  The  parish  of  the  twelve  Apostles  was  the 
world,  so  far  as  then  known;  their  ministry  was  to  be 
universal.  That  of  the  seventy  disciples  was  a  more 
temporary  arrangement,  had  no  such  ecumenical  refer- 
ence or  prospect,  and  did  not  run  out  into  the  future. 
It  was  simply  intended  to  be  an  advance  guard  of 
heralds  to  proclaim  the  advent  of  their  Master,  who  was 
to  follow  hard  upon  them  and  make  His  overtures  be- 
fore the  last  tragedy  of  the  cross  at  Jerusalem.  So  as 
soon  as  they  had  finished  their  circuit  they  returned 
and  disbanded,  and  were  presumably  resolved  again 
into  the  undistinguished  company  of  His  followers. 

197 


1 98  LIFE  IMMORTAL 

Luke,  who  mayhap  was  one  of  them,  reports  that  they 
were  highly  gratified  with  their  expedition ;  their  success 
had  exceeded  their  expectation.  They  had  found  upon 
trial  that  their  powers  were  so  large  and  effective,  that, 
at  their  command,  malevolent  spirits  became  tame 
and  tractable.  They  told  Jesus  that  they  had  fallen 
in  with  some  pronounced  manifestations  of  satanic 
influence  and  were  surprised  at  their  easy  mastery  of 
the  situation.  In  short,  they  had  made  a  victorious 
sally  upon  the  powers  of  darkness,  and  had  liberated 
many  thralls,  and  restored  many  to  reason  and  man- 
hood. The  possession  and  exercise  of  this  strange, 
preternatural  gift  was,  to  those  men,  a  topic  of  self- 
gratulation. 

The  consciousness  of  any  kind  of  power  is  always 
agreeable;  it  gives  a  feeling  of  importance  and 
gathers  a  following,  and  makes  one  more  or  less 
indispensable,  according  to  the  kind  and  degree  of  in- 
fluence one  can  exert.  Be  it  physical,  intellectual, 
social  or  moral,  power  is  always  desirable,  has  been  the 
immemorial  search  and  endeavor  of  man.  It  is  easy 
to  understand  that  the  seventy  disciples  passing 
through  the  villages  of  Judea,  attacking  all  sorts  of 
disease  and  deformity,  must  have  attracted  attention 
and  created  a  notoriety  that  could  not  fail  to  be  grati- 
fying as  human  nature  is  made.  Everyone  loves 
praise  and  applause,  secretly,  at  least,  if  not  apparently 
and  openly:  this  is  part  of  our  natural  equipment. 
Take  away  the  craving  for  admiration,  for  meritorious 


LIFE  IMMORTAL  199 

mention  or  recognition  founded  upon  some  advantage 
or  priority,  and  a  potent  factor  would  be  withdrawn 
from  life  and  much  of  the  animus  and  stimulus  that 
propel  society  would  disappear  with  it.  So  we  are 
prepared  to  read  that  the  seventy  disciples  were 
jubilant  over  their  victorious  progress.  It  was  a  new 
sensation  to  them,  for  they  had  not  been  used  to  such 
wild  ovations. 

Observe  their  great  Master's  reply.  He  expressed 
no  surprise;  on  the  contrary,  intimated  that  the  re- 
sults they  had  got  were  what  He  had  anticipated: 
''I  beheld  Satan  as  Hghtning  fall  from  heaven." 
Here,  as  so  often,  Jesus  betook  Himself  to  tropical, 
exuberant  language  and  metaphor.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  suppose  that  He  alluded  to  the  original 
fall  of  Satan  as  an  angel  of  Hght,  such  as  Milton 
describes  in  his  stately  epic,  as  though  He  had 
said  that  He  Himself  was  present  at  that  date  and 
witnessed  the  meteoric  fall  of  the  great  archangel. 
The  statement  probably  was  not  a  page  torn  from  the 
histories  of  eternity;  rather  did  it  sum  up  in  a  vivid, 
powerful  phrase  His  private  certitude  touching  the 
final  issue  of  the  age-long  conflict  between  Hght  and 
darkness,  good  and  evil,  in  which  He  was  engaged.  It 
is  as  if  Jesus  had  said:  "I  foresee  the  time  when  the 
throne  of  evil  shall  be  overturned  and  this  world  shall 
come  to  order  and  be  reduced  to  a  reign  of  law.  Your 
ability  to  conquer  distempers  is  a  harbinger  of  that 
age  and  highly  significant." 


200  LIFE  IMMORTAL 

But  mark  that  He  adds  a  notable  statement; 
He  advises  those  seventy  disciples  that  there  is 
something  better  than  exorcising  demons,  and  that  is 
to  live  under  a  constitution  of  things  where  there 
shall  be  no  demons  to  cast  out.  It  is  worthy  of 
attention  that  their  Master  did  not  congratulate 
them  so  heartily  upon  the  cures  they  had  wrought, 
but  rather  upon  the  more  blessed  fact  that  they 
were  bound  to  a  splendid  destiny,  of  which  this 
twilight  stage  and  all  its  boasted  achievements  are 
merely  a  hint:  '^  Rejoice,  because  your  names  are  writ- 
ten in  heaven."  This  is  a  golden  sentence,  prophetic, 
immense.  Observe  the  artless  simplicity  of  these  men 
in  contrast  with  the  maturity  of  Christ.  They  talked 
as  children  do  of  what  they  had  seen  and  done:  "The 
very  demons  are  subject  to  us,"  they  cried;  but  Jesus 
transcended  their  point  of  view.  "After  all,"  said  He, 
"what  you  narrate  is  no  great  thing;  its  value  resides 
in  what  it  impKes  and  prefigures."  He  led  them  up 
out  of  the  wandering  stage  of  childhood,  and  ex- 
pounded the  philosophy  of  their  success  and  whither 
it  conducted. 

And  we  can  see,  upon  reflection,  that  this  ^is  the 
only  complete  and  satisfactory  treatment  of  any 
fact  or  event.  The  final  question  must  always  be, 
What  does  it  mean?  Whither  does  it  lead?  We 
need  to  know  not  merely  the  bare  existence  of  a  thing, 
but,  more  than  that,  its  relations  and  organic  coherence 
with  other  things  and  histories;  how  it  came  to  be, 
what  it  will  naturally  ultimate  in.    The  phenomenon 


LIFE  IMMORTAL  201 

by  itself  is  not  enough,  needs  to  be  explained  by  its 
context.  You  may  possess  any  kind  of  talent, — in- 
tellect, physical  beauty,  social  charm,  personal  in- 
fluence,— and  the  gift  may  be  a  curse  rather  than  a 
blessing  until  it  is  ascertained  what  you  do  with  it, 
what  it  is  worth  to  you  and  to  others.  How  often  we; 
fail  to  seize  the  essential,  permanent  element  in  life, 
forgetting  that  there  is  a  kingdom  of  moral  truth,  a 
religious  kingdom,  great  peaks  of  ideahsm  that  out- 
soar  the  low  flats  where  we  are  scrambling  and  shoul- 
dering one  another  for  the  meat  that  perishes. 

^'In  this  rejoice  not,  that  the  spirits  are  subject  unto 
you;  but  rather  rejoice,  because  3^our  names  are  writ- 
ten in  heaven."  Jesus  seems  to  say  that  even  those 
extraordinary  endowments,  of  the  nature  of  miracle, 
that  He  had  bestowed  upon  His  disciples  were  valuable 
not  so  much  in  themselves,  as  on  account  of  what  they 
betokened.  His  remark  implies  that  if  there  were  no 
invisible  kingdom  of  archet3q3es,  ideals,  spiritual  forces, 
if  their  names  were  not  written  in  heaven,  their  exploits 
would  be  of  small  moment.  For  authentic  miracle  is 
set  upon  moral  foundations,  it  has  to  do  with  the  king- 
dom of  God,  it  is  an  echo  in  time  of  an  eternal  process. 
The  signs  and  wonders  that  ushered  in  Christianity  in- 
dicated the  nearness  of  the  spiritual  realm  to  this  finite 
and  visible  one.  The  light  as  of  Deity  that  shone 
around  Jesus  and  transfigured  His  person,  the  mighty 
works  He  wrought  with  the  ease  and  spontaneity 
of  nature,  were  hints  and  symptoms  of  an  eternal 


202  LIFE  IMMORTAL 

order,  of  a  higher  and  diviner  and  more  powerful  life. 
This  explains  what  He  is  reported  to  have  said:  ''The 
Father  that  dwelleth  in  me,  he  doeth  the  works  " ;  and 
again,  "The  works  which  the  Father  hath  given  me  to 
finish,  .  .  .  bear  witness  of  me,  that  the  Father 
hath  sent  me."  Clearly,  Jesus  virtually  says  that  His 
miracles  were  the  hidings  of  omnipotent  power;  if 
they  had  not  connected  with  an  invisible  sphere  and  a 
system  of  truths  out  of  sight,  they  would  have  had  no 
value  at  all,  or,  better  stated,  they  would  not  even  have 
taken  place.  The  underlying,  imperishable  truth, 
that  "God  is  in  Christ  reconciling  the  world,"  is  the 
supreme  fact  from  which  the  Christian  miracles  bor- 
rowed their  luster.  Behind  the  thing  is  always  the 
thought;  behind  any  movement  is  its  constructive 
idea,  behind  the  natural  is  the  spiritual,  behind  the 
empirical  is  the  metempirical.  Nothing  out  of  the 
common  would  have  happened  in  the  natural  order 
had  Christ  Himself  not  been  of  a  supernatural  order. 
He  is  the  great  miracle.  He  is  Christianity.  And 
this  for  substance  is  what  He  told  the  seventy  upon 
their  return;  that  if  there  were  no  heaven,  no  celestial 
vision  of  God  possible  to  man,  no  progressive  future  in 
store  for  the  human  spirit,  no  wide  kingdom  of  eternity 
where  virtue  and  knowledge  and  power  and  love  may 
wax  and  come  to  even  greater  realizations,  in  that  case, 
they  might  cleanse  all  the  lepers  and  restore  all  the 
lunatics  from  Dan  to  Beersheba,  and  their  work 
would  have  no  significance,  no  divinity. 


LIFE  IMMORTAL  203 

That  which  keeps  the  gospel  alive  in  the  world  is 
its  divine  origin  and  essential  truth.  It  does  not 
depend  for  its  perpetuity  upon  the  continuance  of 
miracles  or  upon  external  aids.  The  conservative 
principle  of  it  is  interior,  intangible,  unseen.  It  can 
dispense  with  signs  and  wonders;  it  has  actually  out- 
lived them.  This,  probably,  is  what  Jesus  meant. 
Miracle  was  necessary  as  a  credential  to  introduce  and 
certify  Him;  He  said  so;  but  our  main  concern  after  1 
all  is  to  attain  a  religious  hope,  a  spiritual  vision,  a' 
growing  sense  of  sonship  to  God;  to  find  contentment, 
serenity,  joy,  in  this  autumnal  world  of  deepening 
shadows  and  falHng  leaves.  An  assurance  of  God's 
love,  a  faith  robust  enough  to  purify  the  heart  and 
overcome  the  world,  this  is  the  supreme  good,  not 
that  the  demons  are  subject  unto  us,  but  the  trans- 
cendental element  in  religion,  that  in  it  which  connects 
with  destiny,  eternity  and  worlds  and  ages  to  come. 

Men  and  schools  have  sometimes  posited  the  essence 
of  the  Christian  religion  in  certain  adventitious  and 
immaterial  circumstances.  They  have  built  around 
it  a  body  of  externals,  upon  which,  often,  undue  em- 
phasis has  been  laid.  Sacerdotalism,  sacramentarian- 
ism,  or  some  dogmatic  definition  has  been  set  up  as  an 
integral  part  of  it,  but  nothing  of  the  sort  can  keep  it 
alive,  if  there  be  no  inherent  virtue,  no  self-evidencing 
light,  no  native  authority  in  the  thing  itself.  The 
great  Christian  hope  should  not  be  confounded  with 
the  \isible  church,  or  with  some  private  interpretation 


204  LIFE  IM]\IORTAL 

of  a  biblical  text,  or  with  a  spectacular  ritual  or  a  time- 
honored  phraseology;  these  are  only  accessories  and 
shadows,  and  are  not  of  the  substance.  The  Christian 
idea  cannot  be  penned  up  within  such  narrow  limits;  it 
is  large,  elastic,  atmospheric;  it  transcends  all  hedging 
limitations  and  shallow  channels  that  have  been  set 
for  it.  See  how  intuitively  and  firmly  Christ  grasps 
the  effectual  truth,  for,  after  distributing  to  the  seventy 
disciples  extraordinary  power,  He  adds:  Do  not  think 
too  much  of  it;  there  is  something  better — your  ulti- 
mate salvation,  and  to  have  your  names  written  in 
heaven.  This,  He  declares,  is  the  most  splendid  and 
affluent  possibiKty  within  our  reach,  that  we  may  be 
saved  out  of  all  the  storms  and  perils  of  time  into  the 
spacious  and  endless  kingdom  of  the  heavens.  No 
feature  of  man's  condition  is  so  hopeful  as  this,  that 
he  is  susceptible  of  expansion,  exaltation,  perfection. 
For,  ''this  corruptible  must  put  on  incorruption,  and 
this  mortal  must  put  on  immortality."  Your  miracles, 
your  fame,  your  medals  of  honor  and  stars  of  distinc- 
tion, your  patronage  and  power,  your  primacy  what- 
ever it  consists  in,  what  are  all  these  compared  to  the 
ideal  possibilities  and  altitudes  of  the  spirit,  and  to  the 
things  which  God  has  prepared  for  those  who  attain 
unto  His  resurrection? 

The  great  men  of  the  earth  have  had  at  times 
a  dim  suspicion  of  this  truth  announced  by  Christ. 
Have  they  not  all  been  conscious  failures?  Have  not 
the  prophets,  the  heroes,  the  mighty  captains,  the 


LIFE  IMMORTAL  205 

pioneers  of  humanity,  called  aloud  like  Elijah,  now 
and  again,  "Let  me  die:  I  am  no  better  than  my 
fathers"?  Which  of  them  did  not  feel  that  Hfe  is 
a  subtle,  doubtful  game;  which  of  them  won  his 
whole  contention,  which  of  them  was  satisfied  as  he 
looked  out,  for  the  last  time,  upon  his  world?  Why 
talk  of  successful  men?  WTiy  glory  in  our  miracles? 
What  little  we  get  done  here!  How  little  there  is  to 
be  said  about  anyone  when  death  comes,  and  the 
hireHng  goes  forward  to  receive  his  penny  at  sunset! 
As  Jesus  said  to  those  Evangelists,  the  thing  to  be  most 
desired  is  to  have  one's  name  written  in  heaven. 

Surely,  this  is  a  magnificent  outlook  opened  up  by 
Christ,  that  there  is  an  immortal  life,  a  range  of  activi- 
ties and  attainments  compared  to  which  the  most 
successful  Kfe  here,  the  one  that  has  had  most  of  its 
ambitions  satisfied  and  hopes  fulfilled,  is  like  the  dawn 
upon  the  hills.  Reflect  upon  Christ's  estimate  of  this 
world  and  its  honors  and  triumphs,  its  amarants  and 
ovations  and  all  its  secular  greatness.  How  unworldly 
He  was!  What  little  store  He  laid  by  the  glittering 
temporalities  which  captivate  us,  and  the  materialisms 
that  are  so  clamorous,  and  absorb  us.  He  must  have 
seen  far  into  the  heart  of  things,  for  the  power  and 
glory  of  Hfe  do  not  seem  to  have  had  any  attraction 
for  Him.  Neither  Jewish  politics  nor  imperial  politics 
detained  Him  long  nor  interested  Him  much.  He 
looked  through  and  beyond  them;  He  appeared  to 
be  entranced  by  the  \ision  of  something  more  stable 


2o6  LIFE  IMMORTAL 

and  splendid,  and  to  hear  the  distant  bells  of  the  city 
of  God.  Such  was  His  religious  genius,  so  luminous 
and  penetrating,  that  these  stabilities  upon  which  men 
build,  He  regarded  as  sinking  sand,  and  this  whole 
world  of  time  and  the  panoramas  of  its  history,  as  a 
passing  phase  in  the  eternal  process  of  God's  kingdom. 
All  that  Jesus  said  and  did,  proclaimed  that  His  citi- 
zenship was  not  here.  Even  when  His  disciples  re- 
turned, flushed  and  impatient,  to  tell  Him  what  they 
had  done  in  the  way  of  miracle-working,  He  pointed 
them  away  toward  the  great  beyond.  And  the  infer- 
ence is  that  whatever  we  may  accomplish  in  this  world 
is  merely  a  fragment,  a  hint,  a  prelude  of  what  shall 
be  possible  to  those  who  are  worthy  of  eternal  life.  I 
care  not  how  useful,  honored,  diligent,  effective,  any 
human  Hfe  is  or  has  been,  it  is  only  a  beginning,  the 
bungling  work  of  an  apprentice  who  is  trying  to  learn 
the  proper  use  of  his  hands  and  tools.  It  is  a  great 
thing  to  live,  to  serve  one's  generation,  to  play  one's 
part  ably,  to  help  forward  the  world,  if  only  a  little; 
but  what  makes  life  important  and  critical  is  not  so 
much  what  it  gets  actually  accomplished  here,  but 
what  it  prefigures  and  prepares  for,  what  it  makes 
out  of  the  toiler,  what  it  confers  upon  him  in  the  way 
of  fitness  for  that  which  lies  ahead,  for  some  riper 
stage  and  larger  opportunity.  ''Rejoice  not,  that  the 
spirits  are  subject  unto  you;  but  rather  rejoice,  be- 
cause your  names  are  written  in  heaven." 


Date  Due 

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